COVID-19 in hospitalized patients in 4 hospitals in San Isidro, Buenos Aires, Argentina

  1. María Ana Barra
  2. Nelson Adolfo Carlos Medinacelli
  3. Camilo Andres Meza Padilla
  4. Lucrecia Di Rocco
  5. Ramiro Manuel Larrea
  6. Giuliano Gaudenzi
  7. Verónica Vanesa Mastrovincenzo
  8. Elisa Raña
  9. Inés Moreno
  10. Dagmar Ana Sörvik
  11. Andrea Sarlingo
  12. Florencia Dadomo
  13. Miguel Torrilla

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Abstract

In December 2019, a novel illness called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was described in China and became pandemic in a few months. The first case was detected in Argentina on March 3, 2020.

A multicentre prospective observational cohort study on hospitalized patients with COVID- 19 was conducted in 4 hospitals in San Isidro district from March 1, 2020 to October 31. Data was obtained by the attendant physician. 668 patients were included, the median age was 54 years, and 42.7% were female. Male sex and older age were associated with COVID-19 disease and more strongly with severity. Most frequent symptoms were fever and cough followed by dyspnoea, myalgia, odynophagia, headache, anosmia, and diarrhoea. Non-severe patients had more upper respiratory symptoms while severe patients had mainly lower respiratory symptoms on admission. Most common comorbidities were arterial hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. A great proportion of patients had normal thorax X-ray and ground-glass opacity in tomography. In severe patients, radiography and tomography had a predominant ground – glass pattern, but normal radiography and tomography on presentation were present in 22% and 5.9%, respectively. The absence of fever and normal radiology on admission neither excluded the disease nor further severity. PCR elevation was related with COVID-19 disease and with severity, while lymphopenia was more related with the disease and leukocytosis and thrombocytopenia with severity. 8, 4% of patients were health care workers. The mortality rate was 12.4%, 32.7% in severe patients and 61.2% in ventilated patients. Mortality was higher in the public hospital, probably associated with patients with older age and more comorbidities. All these observations can contribute to the knowledge of this disease in terms of diagnosis and prognosis.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.30.21261220: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIACUC: The study was approved by the Institutional Evaluation Committee of the Austral Hospital registered in the Office of Human Research Protections IORG0006075, IRB00007319 – Universidad Austral IRB and in the Buenos Aires Province Central Ethic Committee.
    Consent: Informed consent was obtained verbally owing to the contagiousness of the disease and for cases in which it could not be obtained it was waived as it is a low risk study and all data were analyzed anonymously.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power AnalysisNo sample size calculation was performed; the sample size was established by the time window of the study.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All analyses were performed with the use of R software (R Project for Statistical Computing; R Foundation).
    R Project for Statistical
    suggested: (R Project for Statistical Computing, RRID:SCR_001905)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.30.21261220 on medRxiv