Prevalence And Clinical Characteristics Of Gastrointestinal Manifestations In Covid-19 Patients In Peru: A Multicenter Cohort Study

Aims World Health Organization defined the Coronavirus Disease 2019 as an international public health emergency. Although the majority have respiratory symptoms; there is evidence that it can also present with digestive symptoms such as diarrhea or abdominal pain. Our objective was to determine the prevalence and describe clinical characteristics of gastrointestinal manifestations in patients hospitalized for coronavirus in a multicenter cohort from Peru.

Methods We desgned a prospective, descriptive and cross-sectional study in adults patients from four Hospitals in Peru. The study population were patients older than 18 years with a diagnosis of COVID-19, in the period from May 22 to July 11, 2020 and who met the inclusion criteria. The Chi-Square test was used for the qualitative variables and the Mann-Whitney “U” test for the quantitative variables, statistical significance was considered a value of p <0.05. The IBM SPSS v 23 program was used.

Results From a total of 1313 patients, 35.9 % of the patients had at least one gastrointestinal symptom, being diarrhea (12.9 %) the most frequent . Patients with gastrointestinal symptoms had higher rates of fever, fatigue, headache, sore throat, dysosmia and dysgeusia. Diabetes Mellitus, Arterial Hypertension, dyslipidemia and obesity were also found more frequently in this group. There were no differences in terms of laboratory, severity and mortality in both groups.

Conclusions Health personnel should bear in mind that digestive symptoms can be one of the forms of presentation of COVID-19; for timely identification and early treatment.

Citation Agurto HS, Veramendi-Schultz I, Vásquez-Elera L et al. eP510 PREVALENCE AND CLINICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GASTROINTESTINAL MANIFESTATIONS IN COVID-19 PATIENTS IN PERU: A MULTICENTER COHORT STUDY. Endoscopy 2021; 53: S267.

Publication History

Article published online:
19 March 2021