A systematic review of covid-19 patients with COPD as comorbidity

Abstract

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging infectious disease that has spread rapidly at the beginning of the year 2020 across the world. Very few studies have described the mortality risk and possible seriousness of patients with COVID-19 and COPD as comorbidity.

Method: From its start until July 22, 2020, we systematically checked electronic databases. The author’s extracted data, in accordance with the systematic review, preferred reporting objects. All the studies which reported cases on both COVID-19 and COPD were included in our study. 25 articles were identified and reviewed independently by the authors and 13 articles were found to be appropriate for this review.

Results: In our study, we selected 8 articles as per our inclusion criteria. We have taken an overall sample size of 1618. Among these, only 31 (4.75%) patients were a known case of COPD. Three studies that included 18 patients with COPD reported severe COVID-19. 61.1% (11/18) patients had severe COVID-19 compared to 39.9% (7/18). Among 2 studies showed that COVID-19 confirmed cased with COPD had a 60% (6/10) mortality rate whereas patients without COPD had 55% (86/157).

Conclusion: Though the prevalence rate of COPD in COVID-19 is less, the severity of the disease is more in COPD patients. The mortality rate is also comparatively high in patients with COPD as comorbidity. There is a relative increase in the adherence to medication by patients suffering from COVID-19 with COPD as comorbidity.