Length of Stay of Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19 and Affecting Factors in Hormozgan Province, Iran: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Despite the change in the pattern of diseases, in December 2019, a communicable disease has spread throughout the world. The nature of the disease necessitated hospitalization and the use of hospital services. In this study, the length of stay of patients in the hospital and its affecting factors were investigated.

In this retrospective cohort study, data of all admitted patients (8936 people) in 21 hospitals from March to June 2020 were collected from MCMC system. Considering the inclusion criteria, the data of 4890 patients after entering SPSS 16 were analyzed with descriptive and analytical statistics.

About 4890 confirmed COVID-19 cases were hospitalized. 52.3% were male and 28.4% were over 60 years old. The mean LOS of living patients was 2.6 vs. 4.1 for deceased patients(P-value &lt; 0.001). The most common clinical symptoms were cough (51.1%), fever (44.2%) and respiratory distress (40.6%). The mean stay of patients without cough and fever (3 and 2.9 days) was significantly higher than patients with these symptoms (2.4 and 2.5 days) (P-value &lt; 0.001). Unconsciousness, non-intubation, smoking, drug abuse and underlying diseases of cancer, diabetes and heart and kidney diseases with a significant relationship were among the effective factors in long LOS (P-value < 0.05).

Identifying the factors affecting the length of stay can provide useful information for the management system of COVID-19 in relation to the role of each factor and provide a basis for providing appropriate solutions to adapt the length of stay to these factors.