Hypertension and COVID-19: A Comprehensive Study on Prevalence, Clinical Features, and Health Outcomes
Abstract
Hypertension is a widely recognized cardiovascular comorbidity among patients infected with COVID-19, significantly elevating the risk of severe illness and mortality. This study evaluated the prevalence of hypertension in COVID-19 patients and their clinical features and health outcomes. The authors conducted a retrospective observational study at Indus Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan, involving COVID-19 patients hospitalized between April 2020 and March 2021. Data were extracted from the electronic medical record database and analyzed using IBM SPSS v.27. The relationship between different categorical variables was examined using chi-square test. Among 1029 patients, a majority were male (n = 707, 68.7%) with an average age of 57.2 ± 14.6 years and 60 years and above (n = 516, 50.1%). Hypertension was found to be prevalent among 50.3% of COVID-19 patients. Most patients experienced fever before admission (n = 803, 78.0%), shortness of breath (n = 775, 75.3%), dry cough (n = 354, 34.4%), and productive cough (n = 193, 18.8%). Hypertensive COVID-19 patients had more critical illness (40.3% vs. 27.8%) than non-hypertensive patients. In most patients, 29.3% had cardiac arrest, followed by acute respiratory distress syndrome (17.6%) and sepsis (12.1%) during the hospital stay. Additionally, hypertensive patients posed more fatal outcomes (n = 220, 42.5% vs. n = 148, 28.9%, p < 0.001) than non-hypertensive patients. A significant correlation was observed between cardiac and respiratory complications such as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and hypertension in these patients (all p values < 0.05). In conclusion, our study revealed a high prevalence of hypertension among COVID-19 patients. Common clinical symptoms on admission include fever, shortness of breath, cough, weakness, and malaise. Hypertension was significantly associated with gender, age groups, clinical characteristics, severity, mortality, and complications in COVID-19 patients.
Keywords: hypertension, COVID-19, prevalence, severity, mortality.
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