Aims

To evaluate the impact of SARS-CoV2 infection in the clinical control and symptoms in a cohort of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients.

Methods

Retrospective, observational, case-control study of 39 COPD patients with COVID-19 during the period March 2020 and December 2021. These patients were matched (1:2) for their baseline COPD severity with patients not infected during the study period. The baseline respiratory evaluation of all patients was considered the one realized before the pandemic (2019) in the outpatient clinic of University Hospital Santa Maria of Lleida. Differences of long COVID-19 symptoms, dyspnea measured with modified Medical Research Council (mMRC), COPD assessment test (CAT) score and the mean number of exacerbations in the last 3 months of 2021 were analyzed and compared between groups.

Results

A total of 78 non COVID-19 and 39 COVID-19 patients were included. Groups did not show significant differences in COPD classification, pulmonary function test and 6-minute walking test at baseline. No significant differences were found in control disease parameters regarding number of exacerbations (0.50 vs 0.36; p= 0.242), dyspnea (1.99 vs 1.95; p= 0.872) or CAT punctuation (14.6 vs 13.8; p= 0.557) between groups. There was only an increase in patients infected with COVID-19 in the prevalence of the following symptoms: smell or taste disorders, hair loss and pain in extremities.

Conclusions

Our study suggests that COPD patients infected with COVID-19 did not show changes in the clinical control of their disease. There were only differences in the classic symptoms associated with COVID-19, such as smell or taste disturbances, hair loss and pain in the extremities