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. 2021 Dec 26;11(1):117.
doi: 10.3390/jcm11010117.

Demographic and Clinical Overview of Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients during the First 17 Months of the Pandemic in Poland

Robert Flisiak  1 , Piotr Rzymski  2   3 , Dorota Zarębska-Michaluk  4 , Magdalena Rogalska  1 , Marta Rorat  5   6 , Piotr Czupryna  7 , Beata Lorenc  8 , Przemysław Ciechanowski  9 , Dorota Kozielewicz  10 , Anna Piekarska  11 , Maria Pokorska-Śpiewak  12 , Katarzyna Sikorska  13 , Magdalena Tudrujek  14 , Beata Bolewska  15 , Grzegorz Angielski  16 , Justyna Kowalska  17 , Regina Podlasin  18 , Włodzimierz Mazur  19 , Barbara Oczko-Grzesik  20 , Izabela Zaleska  21 , Aleksandra Szymczak  22 , Paulina Frańczak-Chmura  23 , Małgorzata Sobolewska-Pilarczyk  10 , Krzysztof Kłos  24 , Magdalena Figlerowicz  25 , Piotr Leszczyński  26 , Izabela Kucharek  27 , Hubert Grabowski  28
Affiliations

Demographic and Clinical Overview of Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients during the First 17 Months of the Pandemic in Poland

Robert Flisiak et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

Long-term analyses of demographical and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients can provide a better overview of the clinical course of the disease. They can also help understand whether changes in infection symptomatology, disease severity, and outcome occur over time. We aimed to analyze the demographics, early symptoms of infection, laboratory parameters, and clinical manifestation of COVID-19 patients hospitalized during the first 17 months of the pandemic in Poland (March 2020-June 2021). The patients' demographical and clinical data (n = 5199) were extracted from the national SARSTer database encompassing 30 medical centers in Poland and statistically assessed. Patients aged 50-64 were most commonly hospitalized due to COVID-19 regardless of the pandemic period. There was no shift in the age of admitted patients and patients who died throughout the studied period. Men had higher C-reactive protein and interleukin-6 levels and required oxygenation and mechanical ventilation more often. No gender difference in fatality rate was seen, although the age of males who died was significantly lower. A share of patients with baseline SpO2 < 91%, presenting respiratory, systemic and gastrointestinal symptoms was higher in the later phase of a pandemic than in the first three months. Cough, dyspnea and fever were more often presented in men, while women had a higher frequency of anosmia, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. This study shows some shifts in SARS-CoV-2 pathogenicity between March 2020 and July 2021 in the Polish cohort of hospitalized patients and documents various gender-differences in this regard. The results represent a reference point for further analyses conducted under the dominance of different SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; clinical outcome; epidemiology; pandemic; symptomatology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Structure of age (A) and mean ± SD age (B) of patients hospitalized in different periods of pandemic (n = 5199). (C) Age of patients who died in different periods of the pandemic. (D) Time of hospitalization (mean ± SD) in different periods of the pandemic.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Frequency of early COVID-19 symptoms presented by patients hospitalized in different periods of the pandemic (n = 5199) and (B) comparison in symptoms frequency between the early and late phase of the pandemic.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A) The frequency of patients with baseline SpO2 < 91%, requiring oxygen therapy and mechanical ventilation, and with fatal outcome in different periods of the pandemic (n = 5199) and (B) comparison of these events between the early and late phase of the pandemic. (C) Percentage of patients with improvement in the clinical course of COVID-19 defined as a reduction in the score of at least 2 points on the ordinal 8-score scale (see Material & Methods for a detailed explanation of each score) in different periods of the pandemic and (D) comparison of these percentages between the early and late phase of the pandemic.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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