Association between laboratory parameters and CT severity in patients infected with Covid-19: A retrospective, observational study

INTRODUCTION: Patients diagnosed with COVID-19 have presented to emergency departments (EDs) worldwide with a wide range of symptoms. In this study we reported the clinical, laboratory and radiological features of the cases diagnosed with COVID-19. METHODS: This is a single-center, retrospective, descriptive, and observational study. The patients who have admitted to ED between March 11 and May 31, 2020 and diagnosed COVID-19 infection. RESULTS: 130 (73 male and 57 female) patients with COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive test were included in the study. The average age of the study group was calculated as 52.63 ± 17.95 year. While 15.4% of the patients were asymptomatic, the most common symptom was identified as cough (46.2%), followed by dyspnea (23.1%), fever (17.7%). The computed tomography (CT) severity scores proved significantly higher in the patients with hypertension and coronary artery disease (CAD) than in those without these diseases (p = 0.010 and p = 0.042, respectively). The moderate positive correlation between serum ferritin level and CT severity score is another finding worth noting (rho = 0.530 and p = 0.0001). In a similar vein, the high level of D-dimer in the CT-positive group and its positive moderate correlation with CT severity (rho = 0.375 and p = 0.0001). CONCLUSION: In our study, serum ferritin and D-dimer levels were observed to be high in the CT-positive group and have moderate positive correlation with CT severity. We thus argue that D-dimer and ferritin levels measured at the time of admission to the ED can be taken into consideration to predict radiological severity.