[Evaluation of Patients Diagnosed with COVID-19 in Terms of Risk Factors]

Coronaviruses are RNA viruses that can cause disease in the upper and lower respiratory tract in humans and animals. Lately, a new coronavirus causing pneumonia cases was detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Soon after, the name of the virus was identified as the "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2", and the World Health Organization named the disease coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). In our country, the first cases began to appear in the second week of March. In this study, we aimed to investigate the demographic characteristics and risk factors of patients with the diagnosis of COVID-19. A total of 100 patients (53 female and 47 male) were included in our study. The patients included in the study were randomly selected from the registration system and their information was evaluated retrospectively. The mean age of the patients was 54.42 (Age range= 20-90). When the risk factors for catching the disease were evaluated; it was determined that there was at least one risk factor in 46 patients; 30 patients had close contact with the COVID-19 patient in the social environment (30%) and 16 patients had a travel history outside the city in the last 14 days (16%). The most common symptoms in our patients were; cough (93%), fever (42%), dyspnea (22%), weakness (8%), sore throat (7%), diarrhea (6%), headache (5%) and sputum (2%). The most common comorbid conditions in our patients were detected as hypertension (42%), diabetes mellitus (DM) (21%), congestive heart failure (10%), allergic asthma (7%), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (6%), rheumatoid arthritis (3%), coronary artery disease (2%), solid organ tumour (2%), depression (1%) and epilepsy (1%). The mean age of our 15 patients who were monitored in intensive care unit was 65 y (± 11.46), the mean age of 85 patients followed in the service was 52.55 (± 16.35) and this difference was statistically significant (p= 0.006). When these two groups were compared in terms of comorbid diseases, the presence of DM was 40% higher (n= 6) in intensive care patients, and this difference was statistically significant (p= 0.05). In addition, the majority [11 patients (73%)] of the patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit were male (p= 0.03). When smoking was evaluated as a risk factor for serious illness, 4 of 11 patients (26%) in intensive care unit had a smoking history, while none of the patients who have died due to COVID-19 had a smoking history. These findings suggested to us that smoking does not increase the severity of COVID-19 disease. As a result, knowledge about the disease should be increased rapidly by sharing the studies on risk factors, transmission routes and clinical features of COVID-19 infection, which affects the whole world.