Comparison of clinical characteristics in adult patients under 65 years of age with and without Covid-19 pneumonia

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can cause asymptomatic, mild upper respiratory tract symptoms and pneumonia in young persons. How the disease will progress in each patient is still unknown. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the prognostic markers of the development of pneumonia and the clinical characteristics of patients under 65 years with COVID-19 confirmed by a positive reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction test. METHODS: In this retrospective study, a total of 271 patients admitted in our unit were included. The patients were divided into two groups, those who did and those who did not develop pneumonia. Their clinical features, treatment protocols, and laboratory parameters were recorded retrospectively. RESULTS: Pneumonia developed in 67.9% (n = 184) of the cases. The age in the pneumonia group was higher than that in the non-pneumonia group (p < 0.001). In the logistic regression analysis, the symptom and co-morbidity status were examined according to the presence of pneumonia; hypertension (HT) (OR: 4525, 95% CL: 1,494–13,708) was the most important risk factor for pneumonia. When age and laboratory values were examined according to the presence of pneumonia, advanced age (OR: 1.042, 95% CL: 1.01–1.073), low albumin (OR: 0.917, 95% CL: 0.854–0.986), and high troponin (OR: 1.291, 95% CL: 1.044–1.596) were identified as risk factors for pneumonia. CONCLUSION: In this article, HT (22.3%, P < 0.001) has been considered as an important risk factor, whereas association of diabetes mellitus (21.2%, P 0.029) and smoking (25.0%, P 0.038) was also significant. The median age of the group was 51 (41.5–58) in the group developing pneumonia and 41 (30–48) in the non-developing group. Young patients with these predictive factors should be more carefully evaluated by further diagnostic procedures, such as thoracic computed tomography.