Almost Half of Patients Admitted With COVID-19 Have Complications

FRIDAY, July 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Almost 50 percent of patients admitted to the hospital for management of COVID-19 have at least one complication, according to a study published online July 15 in The Lancet.

Thomas M. Drake, M.B.Ch.B., from the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a prospective, multicenter study in 302 U.K. health care facilities to characterize the extent and effect of COVID-19 complications. A total of 80,388 adult patients with confirmed or highly suspected severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection leading to COVID-19 were included in the study between Jan. 17 and Aug. 4, 2020 (mean age, 71.1 years; 56.0 percent men).

The researchers found that 49.7 percent of the 73,197 patients admitted to the hospital for management of COVID-19 had at least one complication. The likelihood of having a complication was higher for men and for those aged older than 60 years (aged ≥60 years: 54.5 and 48.2 percent for men and women, respectively; aged <60 years: 48.8 and 36.6 percent, respectively). The most frequent complications were renal, complex respiratory, and systemic (24.3, 18.4, and 16.3 percent, respectively); there were also reports of cardiovascular, neurological, and gastrointestinal or liver complications (12.3, 4.3, and 10.8 percent, respectively).

“Hospitalization with COVID-19 is associated with high rates of morbidity in adults,” the authors write. “Survivors of COVID-19 who had suffered at least one complication had a lower ability to self-care on discharge from hospital.”

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