Search Articles

Home / Articles

Steroid use and outcome of COVID-19 in subset of Pakistani population

. Santosh Kumar Sidhwani, Talat Mirza, Ambrina Khatoon, Fouzia Shaikh & Rizma Khan


Abstract

The unique 2019 coronavirus illness (COVID-19) spread quickly in China before affecting 213 nations in Europe, America, Australia, and Asia, including Pakistan. Some virus-infected individuals don't exhibit any symptoms and some had severe symptoms. Afterward, corticosteroid (dexamethasone) has been shown to improve survival in hospitalized patients who require supplementary oxygen, with the highest effect seen in those who require mechanical breathing. Our goal was to ascertain whether steroids had any impact on how severely ill COVID-19 individuals would fare. This cross-sectional study was carried out from April 2020 to September 2020 by recruiting 143 COVID-19 PCR-positive patients who visited the OPD, wards, and ICU at the Ziauddin Hospital using the non-probability consecutive sampling technique.  Among all PCR-positive patients majority were severe (45: 31.5%) followed by critical (32: 22.3). Males were predominant (80; 55.9%) with an age of presentation of more than 50 years (106: 74.1%). Fever (90: 62.9) was the most frequent symptom encountered in all patients with dyspnea (87: 60.8%) being the second most common symptom. 25 (17.5%) patients discharged who did not receive any steroid were asymptomatic and mild while 37 (25.9%) received steroids for ≤3 days and 48 (33.6%) who had steroids for >3 days and were discharged. 20 (14%) patients who had steroids for >3 days and 13 (9.1%) patients who had steroids for ≤days died during the course of their hospital stay. Early steroid use and if used for more than 3 days during the hospital stay increased the chances of recovery and early discharge. Dexamethasone as a single use is more effective as compared to the combination steroid use in terms of the outcome of the patient.

Key Words: COVID-19, steroids, dexamethasone, severity, PCR

Download :