Evaluation of Patients Who Developed Pneumothorax Due to COVID-19

Abstract

Background: Although SARS-CoV-2 infection often affects the lungs, pneumothorax is extremely rare. The aim of this study was to analyze the characteristics of patients who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 and who developed pneumothorax (PNX) and to analyze their risk factors. Methods: Patients who developed PNX, among the patients who were followed up in the hospital due to COVID-19 between 1 April 2020 and 1 April 2022, were included in the study. The mean and standard deviation values of the descriptive statistics were obtained from patient data. The entire application was carried out using IBM SPSS 26 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). p values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: We observed that advanced age and male gender increase the risk of COVID-19 patientsdeveloping PNX, but smoking, sepsis, and being followed-up with mechanical ventilation do not increase this risk. In addition, we observed that the presence of an additional disease increases the mortality rate. Conclusion: We show that advanced age and male gender increase the risk for PNX, which is a rare complication of COVID-19, and that comorbidity is associated with mortality in these patients.

Pneumothorax in hospitalized COVID-19 patients with severe respiratory failure: Risk factors and outcome

“…Recent reports showed an important variability in COVID-19 mortality rate in Italy for hospitalized patients depending on individual prognostic factors and also depending on the pandemic wave, being at a lower risk of death patients hospitalized after the first wave [ 30 ]. Older age seems to have, in general, an important impact on mortality in COVID-19 patients as reported in previous studies and meta-analyses [ 9 , 31 , 32 ] and, more specifically, some studies reported a correlation with older age and a negative prognosis in COVID-19 patients with PNX [ 15 , 33 ]. In our cohort the elevated rate of mortality may partly be explained by the older age of the patients (median age in PNX group 81 years) and partly by the severity of illness at admission.…”