An Analytical Study to Determine the Severity of COVID-19 Among Smokers

Introduction In December of the year 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 virus was discovered in Wuhan, China. It extended to over 180 nations around the world. It can manifest in patients who are asymptomatic to those who are symptomatic, with symptoms ranging from anosmia to severe respiratory distress syndrome. It affects both men and women. The existence of comorbidity is also linked to a significant worsening of the infection. Despite the fact that the principal consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) damage the lungs, the prevalence of current smokers among COVID-19 hospitalized patients has repeatedly been observed to be lower than the prevalence of smokers in the general community. As a result, the evidence from various studies appears to cast doubt on active smoking as a risk factor for COVID-19 pneumonia. Thus, with this background, this study has been conducted with the aim of assessing the influence of smoking as a risk factor for COVID-19 mortality. Methodology An observational study was conducted in a tertiary care center in Tamil Nadu for a period of three months (April 2021 to June 2021). The study participants were all the patients admitted to the COVID-19 ward of the department of general medicine during the study period. Those who were not willing to participate in the study were excluded. The questionnaire contains variables including socio-demographic characteristics, vitals, and investigations, and the outcome variable was death due to COVID-19. The data obtained were entered in Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA) and the results were analyzed using SPSS version 21 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY). Results About 401 individuals participated in the study. The mean age, COVID-19 Reporting and Data System (CO-RADS) score, and CT severity score of the study participants were 50 years, 4.91, and 10.61, respectively. About 63.3% of participants were males, about 92% have not been vaccinated, about 91.8% have a CO-RADS score of 5, about 45.1% were smokers, and about 15.7% have died despite effective treatment. When looking for adverse outcomes, being male (p = 0.047), non-vaccinated for COVID-19 (p = 0.042), and being a smoker (p = 0.008) were the factors that showed statistical significance. Conclusion The mortality due to COVID-19 is high among smokers than non-smokers with statistical significance. Thus, before admitting COVID-19 patients, to classify the patients as mild, moderate, and severe, the risk factor of the habit of smoking can be added. Cigarette smoke is harmful to the lungs in a variety of ways, and further research is needed to understand why there is such a low proportion of current smokers among COVID-19 patients in hospitals. The impact of current smoking on SARS-CoV-2 infection is a delicate and complex topic that should be thoroughly investigated before sending out potentially misunderstood signals.