Lung involvement in COVID-19 positive pregnant women and their outcomes - A clinical and imaging based retrospective case study

ABSTRACT

Background and Aims: COVID-19 has been a globally concerning pandemic affecting more than 20 million people worldwide. Due to physiological and anatomical changes, pregnant women are more susceptible to viral respiratory infections. Although the clinical and radiological features of COVID positive pregnant and non-pregnant women are comparable, literature pertaining to the clinical presentation and the outcomes in COVID positive pregnant women are being researched upon. Aims and Objectives: The main objective is to assess the lung involvement in COVID-19 positive pregnant women based on their clinical presentation and CT imaging features. The secondary aim is to study their clinical outcomes based on the above findings. Methods: This was a retrospective study carried out on COVID-19 positive pregnant women admitted to our hospital over 6 months (from May 2020 to October 2020). The collected data were analyzed with IBM.SPSS statistics software 23.0 Version. Results: There were a total of 480 COVID positive antenatal women detected Out of 480 patients 75.8% (364) were asymptomatic, one hundred and two patients (21.3%) presented with mild symptoms such as fever, dry cough, runny nose, loss of taste/smell without any breathing difficulty. Fourteen patients (2.9%) were identified in the moderate to severe symptomatic category with lung involvement with a 95% Confidence Intervals between 1.41 and 4.42. Three patients sustained mortality, the overall Mortality rate being 0.6%. Conclusion: The majority of the COVID positive antenatal women are asymptomatic or present with mild symptoms as detected from this study. Only a small proportion (2.9%) were identified with respiratory compromise. Although their infectivity rate is quite high, 99.4% of the population were cured and discharged.