Association of Gastrointestinal Symptoms and Clinical Outcomes in Hospitalized Corona Disease 2019 Patients

The coronavirus pandemic 2019 (COVID-19) poses a serious threat to global health. Initially, the respiratory symptoms are at the forefront and dominate the prognosis of the disease. The gastrointestinal symptoms initially described as rare are reported more and more frequently in the latest studies. Our work aimed to determine the prevalence of gastrointestinal manifestations related to COVID 19 and their impact on the prognosis of the disease.

Materials and Methods: Prospective analytical descriptive study collecting all data of 93 files of patients hospitalized for a COVID-19 infection confirmed by RT-PCR over a period ranging from October 28, 2021 to April 8, 2022. The patients were divided into 2 groups to compare: Group I COVID19 patients with digestive manifestations and Group II COVID 19 patients without digestive manifestations.

Results: 91 patients were included in the study with a male predominance in the two groups. 37.4% of our patients with corona disease had gastrointestinal manifestations associated with respiratory signs and only 2.19% had isolated digestive manifestations. The main digestive symptoms were diarrhoea (25.3%), nausea (14.3%), vomiting (11%), acute abdominal pain (15.4%).

By comparing the 2 groups, we found that young subjects (less than 50 years old) presented more digestive manifestations than elderly subjects (p=0.012).

In terms of comorbidities, smoking and laboratory data, there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups.

A chest CT scan was performed in all patients and found a pulmonary embolism in 10 of them, four of whom had initially presented with acute abdominal pain. We interestingly find out that these patients with abdominal pain were more likely to present pulmonary embolism (risk x 4.27) compared with those with other symptoms (OR: 4.267, 95% CI (1.02-17.8), p 0.047).

In terms of mortality, clinical severity of the disease, length of hospitalisation, use of mechanical or non-invasive ventilation and other complications, we found no statistically significant difference between the two groups.

Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that the digestive manifestations linked to COVID 19 occur mainly in young subjects and that their presence is nonspecific and not related to the severity of the disease and does not increase the mortality rate.

In the end, it is suggested to eliminate pulmonary embolism in the face of acute abdominal pain complicated by respiratory distress.