Clinical Profile and Determinants of Mortality in Patients With COVID-19: A Retrospective Analytical Cross-Sectional Study in a Tertiary Care Center in South India

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic gained ground in India, starting from a few cases and spreading to the whole country; eventually becoming the second-most affected country worldwide. Here, we present the clinical and laboratory profile and the risk factors associated with mortality in COVID-19. The study comes from Kerala, a region that reported the first case in India. Kerala has the second-highest case burden in the country but also has managed to keep the case fatality rate down below the national average. Methodology This is a single-center retrospective cross-sectional study on 391 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 positive inpatients between September 2020 and October 2020. Hematological parameters, coagulation parameters, liver function tests (LFT), and renal function tests (RFT) results were collected and compared among survivors and non-survivors to identify predictive biomarkers of mortality. Results The mean age of all patients was 53.2 years (SD 17.0). On bivariate analyses, the mean values of total leukocyte count (TLC), absolute neutrophil count (ANC), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), C-reactive protein (CRP), ferritin, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), D-dimer at admission, prothrombin time international normalized ratio (PT INR), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and creatinine were significantly higher in non-survivors than in survivors: mean (SD) 11.9 (7.6) vs 7.5 (4.2) (x10⁹/L), 10.5 (7.4) vs 5.3 (4.1) (x10⁹/L), 11.6 (13.5) vs 3.4 (3.5), 185 (117) vs 48 (85) (mg/L), 829.4 (551.2) vs 323.6 (374.1) (ng/ml), 905.5 (589.1) vs 485.1 (353.9) (U/L), 4.01 (3.53) vs 1.29 (2.08) (µg/ml), 1.21 (0.42) vs 0.99 (0.18), 105.1 (91.4) vs 33.6 (31.0) (mg/dl), 3.6 (4.1) vs 1.1 (1.6) (mg/dl), respectively, p < 0.001. Absolute lymphocyte count, serum albumin, and albumin/globulin (A/G) ratio were lower in non-survivors than in survivors (mean (SD) 1.3 (1.0) vs 2.0 (0.9) (x10⁹/L), p < 0.001; 3.0 (0.7) vs 3.8 (2.1) (g/dl), p 0.005; 0.9 (0.3) vs 1.2 (0.4), p < 0.001). Multivariate analysis identified ANC, D-dimer at admission, CRP, and BUN as independent prognostic factors associated with mortality. Conclusion Several accessible tests like TLC, ANC, NLR, and BUN can be used in low-resource settings to assess severity in patients with COVID-19. In addition, ANC, D-dimer at admission, CRP, and BUN can be used as independent predictors of in-patient mortality in COVID-19 patients in hospital settings.