ABSTRACT
Background: COVID-19 infection have representing a wide range of clinical features and severity, some patients have mild symptoms, while othershave severe pneumonia. Several previous research findings analyzed and exposed the association between theseverityof COVID-19 and the contributing factors of this pandemic disease. This study was directed to investigate the impact of lifestyle factors onthe severity of illness among COVID-19 patients in Holy Kerbala City/ Iraq. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was performed on 244 patients with COVID-19 by using a systematic random methodat Imam Hussein Medical City. The study was started from October-2021, to July-2022. A questionnaire involved three main parts: part one includes socio-demographic and medical data;the second part consists of 27 items, to measure the lifestyle factors, the third part includes the severity index of COVID-19. The data were collected through the interviewing technique, and the data were evaluated by using the IBM Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) program Version 26, both descriptive and inferential statistical procedurewere used to analyze the result of the study. Results: The results show that 51.6% of patients are within the age group ˃60 years with an MS±SD of 57.06 ± 19.203, 52.9% are males, 59.8% are from the urban area, 13.9% are smokers and 28.3% are previously smokers and 57.8% are not a smoker.80.7% have been exposed to first-time infection. Patients with COVID-19 are shown healthy in items related to diet and nutrition with MS±SD 2.78±0.262,substance use with MS±SD 3.77±0.306, sleep, social support, and environmental exposure. It is also representing an unhealthy lifestyle in the items related to physical activity MS±SD 1.62±0.844, and stress management MS±SD 2.48±0.330. In addition to that 48.4% had a critical level of illness severity, 24.6%, and 23.0% showed a high and a moderate level of illness severity respectively. There is a highly significant correlation found between lifestyle factors and illness severity among patients with COVID19 at a probability value of ≤0.01. Conclusion: The study concludes that an unhealthy lifestyle is related to physical activity, and stress management. A highly significant correlation is present between lifestyle factors and severity of illness among patients with COVID19.
ABSTRACT
Method: A sixty patients with COVID-19 were randomly selected to conduct an experimental study to investigate the benefits of prostrate position and coughing exercises upon cardiopulmonary parameters among non-intubated patients with COVID-19. Results: two-thirds of participants were >60 years old, 60% and 46.7% of the experimental and control group respectively were males, 36.7% of participants did not have any chronic diseases, but asthma was present in a third of them. The bilateralperipheral and central area was the affected part of the lung in more than 40% of patients. More than 45% of the lung volume was affected in 80% of the experimental group and 50% of the control group. Finally, 96.7% of the experimental group and 90% of the control group did not take the COVID-19 vaccine. Furthermore, a statistically significant difference was found between the mean of cardiopulmonary parameters for the experimental group, while there was no statistical significance difference that was shown in the control group. Conclusion: the application of prostrate position and coughing exercises have a positive effect on improving cardiopulmonary parameters among COVID-19 patients lasting for more than four hours.