Convalescent plasma therapy in COVID-19 and discharge status: A systematic review

OBJECTIVE: Covid19 has emerged as a greatest threat of the decade worldwide. At present there is no certain treatment for treating coronavirus diseases, while some antiviral drugs (Remdesivir , Lopinavir and Ritonavir) are under investigation. Many countries including India have adopted the convalescent plasma therapy in the treatment of moderate to severely ill patients. Despite the treatment being given ,there are no such evidences on the utility and efficacy of convalescent plasma. Hence this study tries to find out the impact on the discharge status from hospital of the patients receiving the very therapy. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta analysis. SETTING: An extensive search was made, following PRISMA guidelines on online databases such as Pubmed, Google scholar and Science direct. Studies those fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria ,were included and reviewed and analyzed for a common outcome(discharge status). PARTICIPANTS: A total of 6 eligible studies were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively which included three case control, two case series and one case report. RESULTS: The overall pooled discharge rate from the above studies was 75.7% after the CP therapy. When analyzed for relative risk , it showed CP therapy having a lower risk of staying in hospital (not getting discharged) when compared to Standard therapy ,overall RR (relative risk) being 0.946. CONCLUSION: Our study shows that there is always a higher rate of discharge and low risk of prolonged hospital stay in those patients who receive plasma therapy. CP therapy being a low cost and easy to administer therapy with very less adverse events, requires more focus on further research as it has a potential to become an ideal effective treatment option for COVID-19.