BURCU GÜLŞEN YAŞAR, SELEN ZELİHA MART KÖMÜRCÜ, EBRU KAYA, UTKU MURAT KALAFAT, SERKAN DOĞAN, AYÇA SULTAN ŞAHİN
Comprehensive Medicine - 2023;15(1):63-68
INTRODUCTION: We aimed to evaluate the effect of delta variant, blood tests such as lymphocyte, C-reactive protein (CRP), ferritin, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-cycle threshold (Ct) rates, vaccination status, and invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) in predicting mortality in coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) patients. METHODS: This study is conducted as a retrospective study of all COVID-19 patients with reverse transcriptase-PCR (RT-PCR)-positive confirmation and hospitalization from the emergency room to the intensive care unit at the University of Health Sciences Istanbul Kanuni Sultan Süleyman Training and Research Hospital during the 6-month period between September 2021 and February 2022. Results: We detected delta variant in 59 of 117 patients included in the study and 58 patients had non-delta variant SARS-CoV-2. In-hospital mortality was observed in 68 (58.1%) patients. We found that 72 (61.5%) of the patients were given IMV support and 88 (75.2%) were unvaccinated. We found that patients who received IMV support and resulted in mortality had low lymphocyte levels and high CRP and LDH values. The PCR-Ct values of the patients were 25.04±4.12 in patients with delta variant and 28.54±4.35 in patients with non-delta variant SARS-CoV-2 and we found statistically significantly higher. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: There was no significant difference in mortality between delta variant and non-delta variant SARS-CoV-2 patients. Although patients with delta variant have low PCR-Ct values, there is no significant difference in mortality. Ferritin, lymphocyte, LDH, and CRP can be used to predict mortality in COVID-19 patients.
