Analysis on clinical features of death patients with COVID-19: a retrospective, single-center study from Wuhan, China

Background An ongoing global pandemic of pneumonia caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused thousands of deaths in China since December, 2019. We aimed to describe the clinical course of patients died of SARS-CoV-2 infection.Methods In this retrospective study, we reviewed 194 patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, who died consecutively between Feb 3 to 24, 2020 in Tongji Hospital (Wuhan, China). Basic demographic and clinical information, laboratory findings, complications and treatments were extracted from electronic medical records of Hospital Information System. Unpaired t test was employed to evaluate the statistical differences of the serum level of high-sensitive cardiac troponin I (hs-cTnI) among different age or sex groups. The relationship between hs-cTnI and inflammatory cytokines were estimated using Spearman correlation analysis.Results The death patients aged 69.62 ± 10.98, in which 68.6% were male. 74.7% patients had underlying chronic illnesses. The most common symptoms were fever (83%), cough (69.3%), and dyspnea (65.6%). Decreased lymphocyte count (91.4%), elevated level of hs-cTnI (82.9%) and inflammatory parameters in serum were commonly seen. The hs-cTnI level was significantly higher in the group aged 60–79 and male patients. A week positive correlation was observed between hs-cTnI values and D-dimer values (r = 0.343, p༜0.05). Acute respiratory distress syndrome was the main complication. Assisted respiration, antimicrobial drugs, glucocorticoids and immune globulin were the major treatments.Conclusion Most non-survivors with SARS-CoV-2 infection were old with chronic illnesses, complicated by multiple organ dysfunction. Prevention is better than cure in high-risk population.