Association between the Demographic Characteristics, Severity, Clinical Symptoms, Vital Signs, and Lab Findings and COVID-19 Outcomes in Older Adults

Abstract

Abstract Introduction: The novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) is an evil infectious disease that seriously threatens people's lives and health due to its high infectivity and incidence. A practical solution to curb the pandemic is to facilitate the recognition of poor prognostic factors at earlier stages, especially in vulnerable groups such as elderly individuals, to help clinicians make timely decisions on treatment initiation. Methods This is a retrospective cross-sectional study on information extracted from the medical files of 534 COVID-19 patients aged 60 years and above. Then, the frequencies of these variables by outcome (recovery or death) were analyzed, and the association between the demographic characteristics, severity, clinical symptoms, vital signs, and underlying health and the mortality rate was reported. Results The average age of the population was 72.5 ± 8.77 years. The overall mortality rate was 23.2%. The in-ICU mortality rate was 87%. Mortality increased considerably with a rise in troponin level, 53% with troponin ≥ 100. RDW > 16 and MCV > 96.1 significantly increased mortality. Eighty-six percent of the cases suffered from chronic diseases. The mortality rate in patients with autoimmune diseases was 64%, and that in patients with CKD was 51%. Conclusions ICU admission was the strongest predictive indicator for poor outcomes. Mortality increased significantly in elderly COVID-19 patients suffering from autoimmune diseases, CKD, underlying pulmonary and heart diseases, diabetes, and diastolic and systolic hypotension. MeSH terms: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Age, Mortality, Prognosis