Characteristic ARDS with COVID-19

ARDS is a serious complication of COVID-19 disease that arises in approximately 10-29% of all cases of COVID-19. ARDS resulted from a cytokine storm event that occurred in the second week of the course of the disease. Few factors were related to increasing cytokine productions. This study aimed to describe the clinical characteristics of patients ARDS with COVID-19 in H. Adam Malik General Hospital as the center of COVID-19 in North Sumatera, Indonesia. This is a descriptive study with a retrospective cohort design. The samples of this study were secondary data from the medical record in patients with positive RT-PCR COVID-19 from November 2020 to April 2021. The inclusion criteria of this study were patients with moderate to the critical case of COVID-19 and confirmed by RT-PCR swab for SARS-COV2. Those subjects then followed up until discharged from the hospital to assess the ARDS episode confirmed by PaO2/FiO2 results in Arterial Blood Gases. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS ver 26.0. A total of 91 subjects were enrolled in this study with the most participants being male, age greater than 40 years old. The smoker and comorbid factors such as COPD, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes Mellitus were found to be more common in COVID-19 patients with ARDS. The clinical manifestations of COVID-19 were varied from mild disease including fever, cough, anosmia, ageusia, sore throat, myalgia, coryza until serious manifestations including shortness of breath and chest pain. All Chest X-rays showed bilateral infiltrations. ARDS-related COVID-19 was related to male gender with age greater than 40 years old and have a comorbid disease. Clinical manifestations were varied and few participants with moderate symptoms may progress to ARDS.