Retrospective study of association of haematological parameters with disease severity in COVID patients admitted in Burdwan Medical College and Hospital

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Since December 2019, an increasing number of pneumonia cases of unknown reasons emerged in Wuhan, China. Deep-sequencing analysis from nasopharyngeal swabs, sputum, lower respiratory tract samples, and blood indicated a novel coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV. Our aim was to determine the association of haematological parameters such as haemoglobin (Hb%), total leukocyte count (TLC), platelet count (Plt) with severity of coronavirus disease 19 (COVID 19) infection among patients admitted in the COVID intensive care unit (ICU) and COVID ward, and our objectives were to estimate haemoglobin (Hb), TLC, differential leukocyte count (DLC), and platelet count of patients admitted in the COVID ward and ICU; to derive neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) from the DLC of the patients admitted in the COVID ward and ICU; and to determine the correlation between Hb, platelet count, TLC, and NLR with severity of disease among COVID patients. METHODS: After receiving approval from institutional ethics committee, data were collected according to our study parameter (age, weight, height, Hb%, TLC, platelet, NLR) from the medical record section for ICU-admitted (Group A) and ward-admitted (Group B) patients and compared. Here, SPSS version 22 was used for analysis, and a p value <0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: A decreasing trend in Hb%, TLC, and platelet count was seen in both the groups but more in group A than group B, which is statistically significant; NLR got an increasing trend in these two groups, and the increase in group A is more and statistically significant compared to group B. CONCLUSION: Our study tries to explore the feasibility of such parameters in this regard and found that a combination of NLR, Hb%, TLC, and platelet count can be considered together as an effective prognostic indicator in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).