Comparison of severe and non-severe COVID-19 pneumonia: review and meta-analysis

Objective To compare the difference between severe and non-severe COVID-19 pneumonia and figure out the potential symptoms lead to severity. Methods Articles from PubMed, Embase, Cochrane database, and google up-to 24 February 2020 were systematically reviewed. Eighteen Literatures were identified with cases of COVID-19 pneumonia. The extracted data includes clinical symptoms, age, gender, sample size and region et al were systematic reviewed and meta analyzed. Results 14 eligible studies including 1,424 patients were analyzed. Symptoms like fever (89.2%), cough (67.2%), fatigue (43.6%) were common, dizziness, hemoptysis, abdominal pain and conjunctival congestion/conjunctivitis were rare. Polypnea/dyspnea in severe patients were significantly higher than non-severe (42.7% vs.16.3%, P<0.0001). Fever and diarrhea were higher in severe patients(p=0.0374and0.0267). Further meta-analysis showed incidence of fever(OR1.70,95%CI 1.01-2.87), polypnea/dyspnea(OR3.53, 95%CI 1.95-6.38) and diarrhea(OR1.80,95%CI 1.06-3.03) was higher in severe patients, which meant the severe risk of patients with fever, polypnea/dyspnea, diarrhea were 1.70, 3.53, 1.80 times higher than those with no corresponding symptoms. Conclusions Fever, cough and fatigue are common symptoms in COVID-19 pneumonia. Compared with non-severe patients, the symptoms as fever, polypnea/dyspnea and diarrhea are potential symptoms lead to severity.