Investigating the Association between Initial Symptoms and Clinical Course in COVID-19 patients admitted to Tehran's Bu-ali Hospital in 2020

Background and Objectives Considering the importance of the role of clinical symptoms observed in corona patients in the final clinical course of this disease, we decided to investigate the association between the initial symptoms and the clinical course of corona patients in this study. Subjects and Methods This observational study was conducted on 256 COVID-19 patients referred to Bu-Ali Hospital in Tehran in 2019 using availability sampling method. In this research, variables such as age, gender, education, marital status, underlying disease, smoking, initial clinical symptoms of patients and paraclinical findings as well as the clinical course of the disease in the form of death and recovery were investigated and the association of each symptom with clinical course was measured. Chi-square test was also used to analyze the data. Results The highest and lowest frequency of contracting the corona virus was related to the age range of 61-70 and 21-30 years. 42% of the participants in the study were male and 84% of the patients had a history of underlying disease. Approximately 11% of COVID-19 patients had a history of smoking. According to the study, there was no significant association between gender, marital status and education with the clinical course of COVID-19 patients (P≤0.05). While a significant relationship was found between the clinical course of patients with smoking, disease symptoms and history of underlying diseases (P<0.05). Conclusion Factors such as history of underlying diseases, type of initial clinical symptoms and smoking have a significant association with the clinical course of patients with coronavirus.