Retrospective analysis of patients diagnosed with COVİD 19 presenting to the emergency department

Introduction and purpose: The novel coronavirus SARS-COV-2 was identified as an agent that originated in Wuhan, China's Hubei province, in December 2019, causing an unprecedented respiratory illness. In the Covid-19 clinic, mainly shortness of breath, fever, cough, weakness, loss of taste and smell, muscle pain are seen. The first case in Turkey was reported on March 11, 2020. Since this date, patients have started to apply to hospitals with the suspicion of Covid-19, especially in the emergency services. The aim of our study is to make a retrospective analysis of the patients who applied to the emergency department and to analyze the outcome status of the patients (discharge at home, hospitalization, intensive care hospitalization, intubation, exitus in the emergency department, mortality) and the complaints that brought these data to the emergency department. Materials and Methods: The study was planned with the retrospective cross-sectional data analysis method. 2400 patients who applied to the emergency department of Çukurova University Faculty of Medicine Balcalı Hospital between 15.03.2020 and 01.06.2022 and were diagnosed with Covid 19 from the hospital automation system were examined. 999 patients whose positive COVID-19 RT-PCR results were confirmed at the time of admission were included in the study. SPSS 25.0 package program was used for statistical analysis of the data. Categorical measurements were summarized as numbers and percentages, and continuous measurements as mean and standard deviation. The distributions were checked with the Shapiro-Wilk test for comparison of continuous measurements between groups. Independent sample t-test was used to compare continuous measurements between groups. Chi-square and Fisher's exact tests were used to compare categorical variables. Statistical significance level was taken as 0.05 in all tests. Results: 999 COVID-19 patients were included in our study. 50.5% (n=504) of the patients were male and 49.5% (n=495) were female and the mean age was 51.1±17.1 years. Considering the distribution of age groups, the most common age groups are 50-59 years (n=204; 20.4%), 40-49 years (n=189; 18.9%), and 60-69 years (n=162; 16.2%), respectively. ) range of patients were seen to apply. It was determined that the most frequent application was made in 2020. According to the months, it was seen that the most frequent applications were made in December 2020 (n=314; 31.4%) and November-2020 (n=219; 21.9%). When the complaints of admission to the emergency department were evaluated, it was seen that the most common complaints were cough, shortness of breath, fever and fatigue, respectively. The mortality rate among COVID-19 patients was 4.7% (n=47). As a result of the emergency service application, 0.5% (n=5) of the patients died in the emergency department. It was observed that 75.1% (n=750) of the patients were directly discharged from the emergency department and 24.4% (n=244) were hospitalized in the relevant units. It was determined that 14.6% (n=146) of the patients were hospitalized in wards and 9.8% (n=98) in intensive care units. Conclusion: In our study, we found that most of the patients who applied to the emergency department were discharged from the emergency department, and that male gender, advanced age, and dyspnea symptoms increased hospitalization rates and mortality. Keywords: Covid-19,PCR, Elderly, Mortality