Pre-hospital treatment of COVID-19 patients from a reference hospital in Mexico City

ABSTRACT

Introduction and objective: more than a year after the emergence of COVID-19, many drug therapies have been considered, all based on a critical evaluation of the emerging literature. The main objective of our study was to know the pre-hospitalary treatment of patients with COVID-19. Material(s) and Method(s) we reviewed 101 clinical records of hospitalized patients at the Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Respiratorias Ismael Cosio Villegas National (INER) diagnosed with COVID-19 during the second wave of the pandemic. A database was created, and descriptive statistics were performed using the software GraphPad Prism version 8. Result(s) the mean age of the patients was 52.3 (+/- 11.9) years. Patients received 4-5 medications as pre-hospital treatment;the most commonly prescribed medications were corticosteroids and antibiotics. Conclusion(s) COVID-19 patients received a large number of unnecessary medications during pre-hospital medical care;several of them were prescribed despite the lack of scientific evidence on their use and the national and international recommendations for treating the disease. Copyright © 2022, Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Respiratorias. All rights reserved.