Clinical Characteristics of Chronic Kidney Disease Patients Hospitalised with SARS-CoV-2 Infection

We did a prospective observational study to study the clinical characteristics and mortality due to SARS-CoV-2 infection in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. We included CKD patients of stage 3-5 as well as patients who were on maintenance hemodialysis, who were diagnosed with SARS-COV-2 infection. We studied their clinical course. Independent Student?s t test/ Mann Whitney U test or one way analysis of variance/ Kruskal- Wallis test, whichever is appropriate was done. We included Seventy eight patients who were on hemodialysis and 100 patients who were on medical management. We found that percentage of patients with critical disease increased with the stage of CKD as was the oxygen therapy requirement and mortality. We found that encephalopathy, oxygen therapy requirement, ICU requirement, critical disease were significantly increased in CKD stage 3-5 when compared to patients on maintenance hemodialysis. Mortality in hemodialysis patients was 15 % which was half the mortality seen in patients who were on medical management. We also found that age more than 60 years, presence of hypotension, encephalopathy during hospital stay and ICU requirement were significantly associated with mortality. SARS CoV-2 infection had worse effects on CKD patients on medical management when compared to patients on hemodialysis.