Introduction
COVID-19, a global pandemic that first appeared in China in December 2019, has quickly spread across the globe since the first case was reported [1]. KSA had its first case on March 2nd2020;by March 23rd 2022, case had been reported nationwide. On 14 April, the Saudi Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) investigated a cluster of COVID-19 deaths in Medina. The majority of deaths were occurring in Hospital A, which was Medina’s designated COVID-19 hospital. At that time, Medina had 16% of KSA’s total COVID-19 cases and 40% of all COVID-19 deaths. Subsequently, Hospital B in Dammam was chosen for comparison as it was Dammam’s designated COVID-19 hospital.
Clark et al . [3] developed a prediction model that estimated a potential occurrence of 1.0 to 2.4 billion severe COVID-19 infections among people with severe clinical conditions such as cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, chronic respiratory disease and diabetes.
The severity of disease varies significantly, ranging from asymptomatic infection to the development of severe complications and death [4]. Age, gender, and the presence of co-morbidities have been reported to be contributing factors to COVID-19 severity [5-8]. Patients with diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are more likely to have longer hospitalizations, be admitted to intensive care units (ICU), and require mechanical ventilation [6; 9]. Conversely, mild prognosis has been reported among pediatric cases. However, the severity of the infection has been also reported among children affecting up 5% of the infected patients although compared to adults, children and/or adolescents tend to have a mild COVID-19 course with a good prognosis.[10; 14; 15].
Evidence on the pathology behind the development of the disease has been also variable. At first, it was thought that the virus affects the respiratory tract only, however, reports showed that it can affect many organs including the blood, heart, brain, kidneys, pancreas, and eyes [16; 17]. Moreover, the severity of the infection has been also related to several laboratory variables. Prothrombin time, C-reactive protein, D-dimer, procalcitonin, and fibrinogen levels have been reportedly associated with the deterioration of the disease [18-22]. Some of these biomarkers have helped in the building prediction models to decrease mortality among the critically-ill COVID-19 patients [23; 24]. Other investigations have reported an association between patients’ blood type and the prognosis of the infection [25; 26]. This indicates the fact that mortality due to COVID-19 is different due to the different epidemiology among the affected populations [27]. For that, we aim to assess and compare the different factors related to COVID-19 mortality including patients’ demographics, clinical characteristics, and the used treatment regimens among patients of two Saudi hospitals.