Pulmonary Function of 449 Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients Which Including 141 Asymptomatic Carriers and 308 Mild and Moderate Cases

Background: Since the COVID-19 outbreak, there has been a few articles on pulmonary function studies in COVID-19 patients discharged one month later or three month later. However, there is no literature mentioned about the pulmonary function of hospitalized COVID-19 patients so far. Methods: In this study, we firstly performed a retrospective study to identify the pulmonary function changes with 449 COVID-19 inpatients including 141 asymptomatic carriers compared with 228 non-COVID-19 outpatients which accepted pulmonary function test in health examine center. Results: We found that COVID-19 patients included asymptomatic carriers had worse pulmonary function compared to non-COVID-19 patients even when they were hospitalized. In addition, age may be an important factor which contributes to pulmonary dysfunction in COVID-19 patients. Besides, the IL-6 level in the blood may affect the evaluation of lung function results and may be used to predict the pulmonary function of COVID-19 patients. Conclusion: Early rehabilitation training for COVID-19 patients is critical to their recovery. Funding Information: Supported by Novel coronavirus pneumonia emergency treatment and diagnosis technology research project of Heilongjiang provincial science and Technology Department, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81571871, 81770276), Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital Haiyan Fund (JJMS2021-10), Heilongjiang Postdoctoral Fund (LBH-Z20070). Declaration of Interests: All the authors have no conflict of interest to declare. Ethics Approval Statement: A written informed consent was regularly obtained from all patients upon admission into the 1st affiliated hospital of Harbin Medical University (the intensive care center for severe COVID-19 patients in Harbin, Heilongjiang province). The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of 1st affiliated hospital of Harbin Medical University.