Clinical Presentation
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Coagulation: D-dimer, aPTT Several studies have evaluated the coagulation parameter D-dimer in the progression of COVID-19. Among 3334 consecutive patients admitted to 4 hospitals at New York City, a thrombotic event occurred in 16,0%. D-dimer level at presentation was independently associated with thrombotic events, consistent with early coagulopathy (Bilaloglu 2020). In the Wuhan study, all patients surviving had low D-dimer during hospitalization, whereas levels in non-survivors tended to increase sharply at day 10. In a multivariate analysis, D-dimer of > 1 µg/mL remained the only lab finding which was significantly associated with in-hospital death, with an odds ratio of 18,4 (2,6-129, p = 0,003). However, D-dimer has a reported association with mortality in patients with sepsis and many patients died from sepsis (Zhou 2020). In a considerable proportion of patients, a prolonged aPTT can be found. Of 216 patients with SARS-CoV-2, this was the case in 44 (20%). Of these, 31/34 (91%) had positive lupus anticoagulant assays. As this is not associated with a bleeding tendency, it is recommended that prolonged aPTT should not be a barrier to the use of anti-coagulation therapies in the prevention and treatment of venous thrombosis (Bowles 2020). Another case series of 22 patients with acute respiratory failure present a severe hypercoagulability rather than consumptive coagulopathy. Fibrin formation and polymerization may predispose to thrombosis and correlate with a worse outcome (Spiezia 2020).
Lab findings as risk factor It is not very surprising that patients with severe disease had more prominent laboratory abnormalities than those with non-severe disease. It remains unclear how a single parameter can be of clinical value as almost all studies were retrospective and uncontrolled. Moreover, the numbers of patients were low in many studies. However, there are some patterns which may be helpful in clinical practice. Lab risk factors are: • Elevated CRP, procalcitonin, interleukin-6 and ferritin • Lymphocytopenia, CD4 T cell and CD8 T cell depletion, leukocytosis • Elevated D-dimer and troponin • Elevated LDH
Clinical classification There is no broadly accepted or valid clinical classification for COVID-19. The first larger clinical study distinguished between severe and non-severe cases (Guan 2020), according to the Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines for Adults COVID Reference ENG 006.9
