1. Secondary infections modify the overall course of hospitalized patients with COVID-19: a retrospective study from a network of hospitals across North India
- Author
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Sandeep Budhiraja, Bansidhar Tarai, Dinesh Jain, Mona Aggarwal, Abhaya Indrayan, Poonam Das, Ram Shankar Mishra, Supriya Bali, Monica Mahajan, Jay Kirtani, Rommel Tickoo, Pankaj Soni, Vivek Nangia, Ajay Lall, Nevin Kishore, Ashish Jain, Omender Singh, Namrita Singh, Ashok Kumar, Prashant Saxena, Arun Dewan, Ritesh Aggarwal, Mukesh Mehra, Meenakshi Jain, Vimal Nakra, Bhagwan Das Sharma, Praveen Kumar Pandey, Yogendra Pal Singh, Vijay Arora, Suchitra Jain, Ranjana Chhabra, Preeti Tuli, Vandana Boobna, Alok Joshi, Manoj Aggarwal, Rajiv Gupta, Pankaj Aneja, Sanjay Dhall, Vineet Arora, Inder Mohan Chugh, Sandeep Garg, Vikas Mittal, Ajay Gupta, Bikram Jyoti, Puneet Sharma, Pooja Bhasin, Shakti Jain, Rajinder Kumar Singhal, Atul Bhasin, Anil Vardani, Vivek Pal, Deepak Gargi Pande, Tribhuvan Gulati, Sandeep Nayar, Sunny Kalra, Manish Garg, Rajesh Pande, Pradyut Bag, Arpit Gupta, Jitin Sharma, Anil Handoo, Purabi Burman, Ajay Kumar Gupta, Pankaj Nand Choudhary, Ashish Gupta, Puneet Gupta, Sharad Joshi, Nitesh Tayal, Manish Gupta, Anita Khanna, Sachin Kishore, Shailesh Sahay, Rajiv Dang, Neelima Mishra, Sunil Sekhri, Rajneesh Chandra Srivastava, Mitali Bharat Agrawal, Mohit Mathur, Akash Banwari, Sumit Khetarpal, Sachin Pandove, Deepak Bhasin, Harpal Singh, Devender Midha, Anjali Bhutani, Manpreet Kaur, Amarjit Singh, Shalini Sharma, Komal Singla, Pooja Gupta, Vinay Sagar, Ambrish Dixit, Rashmi Bajpai, Vaibhav Chachra, Puneet Tyagi, Sanjay Saxena, Bhupesh Uniyal, Shantanu Belwal, Imliwati Aier, Mini Singhal, and Ankit Khaduri
- Abstract
To gain better insight into the extent of secondary bacterial and fungal infections in hospitalized patients in India, and to assess how these alter the course of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) so that control measures can be suggested.In this retrospective, multicentre study, the data of all patients who tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) on reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), admitted to hospital between March 2020 and July 2021, were accessed from the electronic health records of a network of 10 hospitals across five states in North India.Of 19,852 patients testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 on RT-PCR and admitted to the study hospitals during the study period, 1940 (9.8%) patients developed secondary infections (SIs). Patients with SIs were, on average, 8 years older than patients without SIs (median age 62.6 vs 54.3 years;SIs complicate the course of patients hospitalized with COVID-19. These patients tend to have a much longer hospital stay, a higher requirement for oxygen and ICU care, and a significantly higher mortality rate compared with those without SIs. The groups most vulnerable to SIs are patients with more severe COVID-19, elderly patients and patients with diabetes. Judicious empirical use of combination antimicrobials in these groups of vulnerable patients can save lives. It is desirable to have region- or country-specific guidelines for appropriate use of antibiotics and antifungals to prevent their overuse.
- Published
- 2022
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