Patients with digestive symptoms have a longer time from onset to admission and their prognosis is worse than patients without digestive symptoms.
Various digestive symptoms (diarrhea, nausea, vomiting etc.) have been frequently reported in patients infected with COVID-19. The aim of that descriptive, cross-sectional, multicenter study was to investigate the prevalence and outcomes of COVID19 patients with such kind of symptoms.
Patients with COVID-19 confirmed by real-time RT-PCR were enrolled (n=204) in the study. The average age was 54.9 years (SD +15.4), 107 men. All of them were analyzed for clinical characteristics, laboratory data, and treatment. They had a variety of manifestations, such as anorexia (83.8% cases), diarrhea (29.3%), vomiting (0.8%), and abdominal pain (0.4%). In 7 cases there were no respiratory symptoms, just digestive symptoms. As the severity of the disease increased, digestive symptoms became more pronounced.
Patients with digestive symptoms as their chief complaint (99 patients (48.5%)) had a significantly longer time from onset to admission than patients without digestive symptoms (9.0 days vs. 7.3 days). Patients without digestive symptoms were more likely to be cured and discharged than patients with digestive symptoms (60% vs. 34.3%). Laboratory data revealed no significant liver injury in this case series.
So, it was found that compared to COVID-19 patients without digestive symptoms, those with digestive symptoms have a longer time from onset to admission and a worse clinical outcome.
https://journals.lww.com/ajg/Documents/COVID_Digestive_Symptoms_AJG_Preproof.pdf