Predictors of the prolonged recovery period in COVID-19 patients: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: The clinical course of COVID-19 may vary significantly. The presence of comorbidities prolongs the recovery time. The recovery in patients with mild-to-moderate symptoms might take 10 days, while in those with a critical illness or immunocompromised status could take 15 days. Considering the lack of data about predictors that could affect the recovery time, we conducted this study to identify them. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was implemented in the COVID-19 clinic of a teaching and referral university hospital in Tehran. Patients with the highly suggestive symptoms who had computed tomography (CT) imaging results with typical findings of COVID-19 or positive results of reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were enrolled in the study. Inpatient and outpatient COVID-19 participants were followed up by regular visits or phone calls, and the recovery period was recorded. RESULTS: A total of 478 patients were enrolled. The mean age of patients was 54.11 ± 5.65 years, and 44.2% were female. The median time to recovery was 13.5 days (IQR: 9). Although in the bivariate analysis, multiple factors, including hypertension, fever, diabetes mellitus, gender, and admission location, significantly contributed to prolonging the recovery period, in multivariate analysis, only dyspnea had a significant association with this variable (p = 0.02, the adjusted OR of 2.05; 95% CI 1.12–3.75). CONCLUSION: This study supports that dyspnea is a predictor of recovery time. It seems like optimal management of the comorbidities plays the most crucial role in recovery from COVID-19.