THE CLINICO-BIOCHEMICAL, RADIOLOGICAL AND PULMONARY FUNCTION TEST ABNORMALITIES IN POST COVID-19 POSITIVE PATIENTS
Govind Narayan Srivastava, *Arya Krishnan, Ishan Kumar, Mohit Bhatia and Shivam Dixit
ABSTRACT
As we battle through the COVID pandemic, the challenging part is to manage COVID-19 sequelae and our
objective was to evaluate the clinico-biochemical, radiological and pulmonary function test abnormalities in post
COVID-19 positive patients. We conducted a prospective cohort study in 100 COVID-19 RT-PCR positive adult
patients (>18 years) from a period of July 2020 to June 2022.Out of the 100 patients, majority came under the 41–
60-year group with mean and standard deviation of 50.3 + 15.41 and majority were male patients (56%).
Significant positive correlation was found with various biomarkers and disease severity - Serum ferritin
(r=0.725,0.325, p<0.001), interleukin-6 (r=0.638,0.473, p value<0.001), Lactate dehydrogenase (r= 0.813,0.487, p
value<0.001) and D-dimer (r=0.744,0.567, p value<0.001) at 1st, 3rd and 6th month after discharge from the
hospital. It was also noted that around 27% of the patients had residual fibrosis 6 months after the covid infection
which was statistically significant and had a negative correlation with the spirometry at 1st 3rd and 6th month. It is
crucial that we start proactively collecting and analysing data from COVID-19 survivors in controlled studies in
order to identify potentially modifiable clinical risk factors or use risk-reduction techniques to help safeguard
patients from developing post-COVID pulmonary fibrosis.
Keywords: Post covid fibrosis, COVID-19, CT severity score.
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