Introduction In December of the year 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 virus was discovered in Wuhan, China. It extended to over 180 nations around the world. It can manifest in patients who are asymptomatic to those who are symptomatic, with symptoms ranging from anosmia to severe respiratory distress syndrome. It affects both men and women. The existence of comorbidity is also linked to a significant worsening of the infection. Despite the fact that the principal consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) damage the lungs, the prevalence of current smokers among COVID-19 hospitalized patients has repeatedly been observed to be lower than the prevalence of smokers in the general community. As a result, the evidence from various studies appears to cast doubt on active smoking as a risk factor for COVID-19 pneumonia. Thus, with this background, this study has been conducted with the aim of assessing the influence of smoking as a risk factor for COVID-19 mortality. Methodology An observational study was conducted in a tertiary care center in Tamil Nadu for a period of three months (April 2021 to June 2021). The study participants were all the patients admitted to the COVID-19 ward of the department of general medicine during the study period. Those who were not willing to participate in the study were excluded. The questionnaire contains variables including socio-demographic characteristics, vitals, and investigations, and the outcome variable was death due to COVID-19. The data obtained were entered in Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA) and the results were analyzed using SPSS version 21 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY). Results About 401 individuals participated in the study. The mean age, COVID-19 Reporting and Data System (CO-RADS) score, and CT severity score of the study participants were 50 years, 4.91, and 10.61, respectively. About 63.3% of participants were males, about 92% have not been vaccinated, about 91.8% have a CO-RADS score of 5, about 45.1% were smokers, and about 15.7% have died despite effective treatment. When looking for adverse outcomes, being male (p = 0.047), non-vaccinated for COVID-19 (p = 0.042), and being a smoker (p = 0.008) were the factors that showed statistical significance. Conclusion The mortality due to COVID-19 is high among smokers than non-smokers with statistical significance. Thus, before admitting COVID-19 patients, to classify the patients as mild, moderate, and severe, the risk factor of the habit of smoking can be added. Cigarette smoke is harmful to the lungs in a variety of ways, and further research is needed to understand why there is such a low proportion of current smokers among COVID-19 patients in hospitals. The impact of current smoking on SARS-CoV-2 infection is a delicate and complex topic that should be thoroughly investigated before sending out potentially misunderstood signals.

The detection of rare congenital cardiac anomalies gives us an opportunity to study such infrequent conditions in greater detail. In this report we describe such an entity that has been reported in the literature extremely rarely. A six weeks old baby boy presented with respiratory distress with features of cardiac failure. The echocardiogram revealed a Criss cross heart with atrioventricular segmental discordance, with a large ventricular septal defect, atrial septal defect and pulmonary arterial hypertension. The ventricles did not have the expected supero-inferior position. There was no ventriculoarterial discordance with no atrioventricular valve straddling. This condition is a rare congenital anomaly. Absence of supero-inferior position of the ventricles, ventriculoarterial discordance and straddling of atrioventricular valves make this case most unusual. Hence such variations need to be considered while entertaining a diagnosis of Criss cross heart in future reports.

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Introduction: The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which was initially reported in Wuhan and later spread to the rest of the world. [1] The incidence of thrombotic events has been reported to be 16% in patients admitted for COVID-19 with an increase in the fibrinogen level and D-dimer level which was associated with mortality. D-Dimer was found to be elevated in severely ill patients admitted in the intensive care unit (ICU) and the dead patients. This study was done to find the prevalence of D-dimer elevation among the COVID-19 patients and its impact on the outcome and to find out the association between the D-dimer elevation and severity of the disease. Methodology: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted from August 2020 to September 2020 in a tertiary care hospital in Salem in the Internal Medicine Department. All the COVID-19 patients of both sexes and all age groups were included in the study. The non-COVID pneumonia cases were excluded from the study. The data were collected from the participants after obtaining their written consent to take part in the study and the data were collected using a pretested and pre-validated schedule. Institutional ethical committee clearance was obtained before the start of the study. Results: The mean age of the patients was found to be 54.89 ± 14.4 with the minimum age being 14 and the maximum age being 87. The prevalence of the D-dimer elevation was found to be 143 (81.8%). D-Dimer was found to be significant with severe COVID infection. Conclusion: The D-dimer levels were found to be more in severe COVID infections compared to mild COVID infections. Furthermore, research is required in this field.