Hypertension in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: A single-center retrospective observational study

Zhenhua Zeng; Tong Sha; Yuan Zhang; Feng Wu; Hongbin Hu; Haijun Li; Jiafa Han; Wenhong Song; Qiaobing Huang; Zhongqing Chen

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint Our research has the following limitations: First, our survey only focused on Hankou Hospital in Wuhan, and the number of patients included was small; larger sample size and multi-center clinical data will be needed to support our conclusions in a future study. Second, our investigation included all clinically confirmed cases. Many patients were not tested because of the lack of nucleic acid test kits at the beginning of the outbreak. Further, there were some patients were suspected to have COVID-19 but were excluded from our study because they tested negative in the hospital; however, based on the exact epidemiological history, the patient's signs and symptoms, and chest CT examination results, we trust the reliability of the COVID-19 diagnosis in these patients. Third, due to the urgent data collection, we had a shorter follow-up time for some patients. The shortest hospital stay for patients is only > 14 days. This may interfere with the final prognosis and lead to the failure to analyze survival times. Fourth, we did not analyze the comorbidities such as shock and ARDS, because our focus is to analyze the risk associated with hypertension to provide evidence for the issue of COVID-19 prevention and treatment guidelines.