Clinical characteristics of 200 COVID-19 patients in Mashhad, Iran, February and March 2020

INTRODUCTION: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a pulmonary involvement which was reported for the first time in December 2019 in the city of Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The aim of the study was to describe the demographic, clinical, laboratory, and radiological characteristics of 204 definitive laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi province, Iran. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This study was performed on 204 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients. A set of laboratory tests combined with various patient information and results from lung high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) were gathered in a checklist and analyzed to give us a better view of patients who are hospitalized due to the complications caused by this disease. RESULTS: The average age of our patients was 58.83 ± 15.93 years. There were 122 (59.8%) male and 82 (40.2%) female patients, and almost all of our patients had at least one underlying disease. Nine (4.4%) of our patients reported having gone for a trip to COVID-19-epidemic areas in the last 2 weeks. The most common signs shared among all our patients were cough, fever, and decreased O(2) saturation; the average respiratory rate was 25.50 ± 6.74/min, average axillary body temperature was 37.69°C ± 0.69°C, and average O(2) saturation was 88.34% ± 7.34%. CONCLUSION: Based on our results, the most common signs of this disease are fever, cough, and shortness of breath, similar to seasonal influenza. Our data on disease severity showed that 33 (16.2%) patients had moderate disease, 139 (68.1%) had severe disease, and 28 (13.7%) were critical; 22 (10.8%) of our hospitalized patients died due to the complications of this disease.