ABSTRACT

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has emerged as an unprecedented health care crisis. There is limited research investigating the clinical and radiological features of COVID-19 patients in Jordan. Aim: To describe the clinical and radiological characteristics of COVID-19 patients. Patients and Methods: This retrospective observational study was conducted using the data of 145 COVID-19 confirmed patients admitted to Al-Karak Governmental Hospital between December 2020 to February 2021. Epidemiological, clinical, and radiological features of patients were obtained from the hospital electronic records. Results: Men were more affected than women, The majority of patients (61.4%) had moderate symptoms and radiological findings of pneumonia, (20%) of patients had mild symptoms such as fever, dry cough, arthralgia, and (18.6%) of patients admitted with severe symptoms. The most common clinical symptoms were shortness of breath (14.9%), cough (12.4%), chest pain (6.2%), and fever (4.8%). The most common underlying comorbidities were hypertension (47%), diabetes mellitus (19.3%), and heart diseases (4.1%). The predominant pattern of abnormality observed were ground-glass opacities (GGOs) (69.7%) and consolidation (23.2%), peripheral (23.3%) and bilateral (95.3%) distribution, which mainly involved the lower lobes (30.2%). Conclusion: Our study demonstrates similar clinical and radiological characteristics of COVID-19 patients in previously reported studies in other countries. Chest radiography and CT scan are important tools for diagnosis and follow up of pulmonary diseases associated with COVID-19. Chest radiography could be used as a tool for identifying COVID-19 pneumonia but is less sensitive than CT scan.