Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 24|pp 24552—24569

Clinical outcomes of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 versus SARS: a meta-analysis

Po-Cheng Chang¹, Chien-Chang Yang², Kuo-Chin Kao³, Ming-Shien Wen¹

¹Division of Cardiology, Department of Internal Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Linkou and Chang Gung University, Medical School, Taoyuan, Taiwan
²Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Linkou and Chang Gung University, Medical School, Taoyuan, Taiwan
³Division of Thoracic Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Linkou and Chang Gung University, Medical School, Taoyuan, Taiwan

* Equal contribution

Received: June 16, 2020Accepted: September 18, 2020Published: November 24, 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Chang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Estimating the case-fatality rate and clinical outcomes for patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is crucial because health care systems must adequately prepare for outbreaks and design appropriate policies. A systematic search of PubMed, Embase, and Medline+Journal (via OVID) were conducted for relevant journal publications from database inception to May 4, 2020. Articles that reported the fatality rates and clinical outcomes of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) infection were included. Nine clinical reports (four SARS reports and five COVID-19 reports) with a total of 851 patients (367 and 484 patients with SARS and COVID-19, respectively) were analyzed. A greater proportion of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 had bilateral pneumonia (90.0% [76.3%–96.2%] vs. 35.9% [21.4%–53.6%], p < 0.001) and required ventilators (23.8% [18.8%–29.6%] vs. 15.3% [11.9%–19.4%], p = 0.010) compared with hospitalized patients with SARS. The case-fatality rate was 9.5% (6.5%–13.7%) and 6.1% (3.5%–10.3%) among patients with COVID-19 and SARS, respectively (p = 0.186). The case-fatality rate among hospitalized patients with COVID-19 was comparable to that during the 2003 SARS outbreak. A higher incidence of bilateral pneumonia and increased ventilator usage were noted among patients with COVID-19 compared with patients with SARS.