Clinical and Paraclinical Characteristics of COVID-19 patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Introduction:Recently, a new strain of coronaviruses, which originated from Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China has been identified. According to the high prevalence of new coronavirus, further investigation on the clinical and paraclinical features of this disease seems essential. Hence, we carried out this systematic review and meta-analysis to figure out the unknown features. Methods:This study was performed using databases of Web of Science, Scopus and PubMed.We considered English cross-sectional and case-series papers which reported clinical, radiological, and laboratory characteristics of patients with COVID-19. We used STATA v.11 and random effect model for data analysis. Results:In the present meta-analysis, 32 papers including 49504 COVID-19 patients were studied.The most common clinical symptoms were fever (84%), cough (65%) and fatigue (42%), respectively. The most common radiological and paraclinical features were bilateral pneumonia (61%), ground-glass opacity (50%), thrombocytopenia (36%) and lymphocytopenia (34%). The study also showed that the frequency of comorbidities and early symptoms was higher in critically severe patients. Moreover, we found the overall mortality rate of three percent.Conclusion: According to that there are many cases without Computed Tomography Scan findings or clear clinical symptoms, it is recommended to use other confirming methods such RNA sequencing in order to identification of suspicious undiagnosed patients. Moreover, while there is no access to clinical and paraclinical facilities in in public places such as airports and border crossings, it is recommended to consider factors such as fever, cough, sputum and fatigue.

Spectrum of Headaches Associated With SARS‐CoV‐2 Infection: Study of Healthcare Professionals

“…Numerous hospital case series and observational studies have described the clinical characteristics of patients in symptomatic phases; headache is recorded among these symptoms. Meta‐analysis of these studies shows that headache is reported in 6%‐15% of patients 1‐8 . All these data are from studies conducted in China; however, preliminary data from our setting suggest that approximately 60% of patients with COVID‐19 presented with headache 8 …”

Neurological involvement in SARS-CoV-2 infection: A clinical systematic review

“…SARS-CoV-2 generally begins as a flu-like syndrome explaining the high prevalence of headache, myalgia and dizziness that likely reflect systemic inflammation more than a direct neurological involvement, as their frequency correlates with the severity of the pulmonary involvement ( Heydari et al., 2020 ). As shown in observational studies published during first weeks after the spread of the pandemic ( Wang et al., 2020 ; Huang et al., 2020 ; Zhou et al., 2020 ; Chen et al., 2020 ), the most frequent neurological-like symptoms were myalgia (11–44%), followed by fatigue (23–69.9%) and headache (6.5–8%).…”

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“…In any case, these reviews (published until April 23, 2020) corroborate the original descriptions: only fever and cough are present in more than half of the patients, with fatigue closely following (30.4-42.0%). [34][35][36][37] Abnormal findings on chest imaging compatible with COVID-19 were reported for 88.2 to 96.6% of patients. According to a recent summary, most patients present more than one symptom on admission, but the combination of fever, cough, and shortness of breath is rare.…”