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. 2020 Apr;40(2):295-300.
doi: 10.1007/s11596-020-2176-2. Epub 2020 Mar 30.

Clinical and Transmission Characteristics of Covid-19 - A Retrospective Study of 25 Cases from a Single Thoracic Surgery Department

Yang-Kai Li  1 , Shu Peng  1 , Le-Qun Li  1 , Qi Wang  1 , Wei Ping  1 , Ni Zhang  1 , Xiang-Ning Fu  2
Affiliations

Clinical and Transmission Characteristics of Covid-19 - A Retrospective Study of 25 Cases from a Single Thoracic Surgery Department

Yang-Kai Li et al. Curr Med Sci. 2020 Apr.

Abstract

The outbreak of corona virus disease 2019 (Covid-19) imposes a major challenge in managing patients undergoing surgical operation. In this study, we analyzed clinical and transmission features of 25 cases of Covid-19 from a single thoracic department, including 13 patients and 12 health care staff. There were 13 males and 12 females. The median age of the patients was 61 (range: 51 to 69) years. The median age of the health care staff was 35 (range: 22 to 51) years. By the end of follow-up date (Mar. 3, 2020), there were 16 non-severe cases (64%) and 9 severe cases (36%), 5 cases were dead (20%). Nineteen (76%) of the infected cases were confirmed by SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid test, the rest were clinically diagnosed as suspected Covid-19 cases, and 19 (76%) of the infected cases had positive exposure history. We found that COPD was significantly associated with severity and death (P=0.040, and P=0.038, respectively), and chest operation was significantly associated with death for Covid-19 patients (P=0.039). A potential "super spreader" may be the source of the transmission before the implementation of quarantine and comprehensive protection. It was concluded that Covid-19 is associated with poor prognosis for patients undergoing thoracic operation, especially for those with COPD. Implementation of comprehensive protective measures is important to control nosocomial infection.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; corona virus disease 2019; nosocomial infection.

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Conflict of interest statement

We declare that we do not have any commercial or associative interest that represents a conflict of interest in connection with the manuscript we submitted.

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