한국인 코로나19 ‘중증 악화’, 4가지가 좌우한다<br /><br />South Korean researchers have found four risk factors causing severe COVID-19 cases.<br />This is the first time such a specific index has been released in Korea, and it could help doctors treat patients better during the early stages of the disease.<br />Lee Kyung-eun explains further.<br />Which patients are most likely to become severely ill from COVID-19?<br />That was the question that brought together doctors in Yeungnam University Medical Center in Daegu, once the epicenter of South Korea's coronavirus outbreak.<br />After analyzing some 110 local patients, they identified four factors that increased the likelihood of patients being transferred to an Intensive Care Unit or dying.<br />The first factor is fever.<br />Those with temperatures higher than 37-point-8 degrees Celsius were nearly four times more likely to become high-risk patients.<br />The second factor is diabetes,... with nearly half of diabetic patients developing severe illness.<br />The chronic disease has been known to make patients more susceptible to illness from infectious diseases, and this finding suggests that COVID-19 is no exception.<br />The third factor is having a heart condition,... and the last factor,... is oxygen saturation rate basically not having enough oxygen in the blood.<br />"Scientists have found out COVID-19 damages cardiac muscles, so having a pre-existing condition could increase vulnerability. And if you have low oxygen saturation, that could mean that pneumonia has already advanced to a certain degree."<br />If you have one of these symptoms, you have a 13 percent chance of becoming severely ill; if you have two 60 percent. And if you have three or more 100 percent.<br />Published in the Journal of Korean Medical Science earlier this month, the study marks the first of its kind to be released in the country.<br />"It can help doctors treat high-risk patients from the early stages of the disease,... which was not so easy because we know little of the virus and it's spreading too fast."<br />But he added the findings should be tested more widely in order to be generalized.<br />Lee Kyung-eun, Arirang News.<br />
