Mortality of a pregnant patient diagnosed with COVID-19: A case report with clinical, radiological, and histopathological findings

Karami, Parisa; Naghavi, Maliheh; Feyzi, Abdolamir; Aghamohammadi, Mehdi; Novin, Mohammad Sadegh; Mobaien, Ahmadreza; Qorbanisani, Mohamad; Karami, Aida; Norooznezhad, Amir Hossein

This report highlights details on a pregnant case of COVID-19 who unfortunately did not survive. This 27-year-old woman at her 30 and 3/7 weeks’ gestation was referred to our center with fever, myalgia, and cough. The laboratory investigations showed leukopenia and lymphopenia as well as increased creatinine and CRP levels. The first chest X-ray (faint bilateral patchy opacities) and CT scan (some faint subpleural ground-glass opacities associated with pleural thickening) were not typical for initial COVID-19 pulmonary infection, however, the treatment for COVID-19 was started. Due to respiratory distress, she was intubated and put under mechanical ventilation. After a while, the fetus was born with Apgar score of 0 and did not react to the neonatal cardiopulmonary resuscitation protocol. Finally, due to deterioration in the clinical and imaging findings, the patient was expired as a result of multi-organ failure. Following the death, autopsy was performed and the histopathologic evaluations of the lungs showed evidence of viral pneumonia (viral cytopathic effect and a mild increase in alveolar wall thickness) and ARDS (hyaline membrane). Also, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in the lungs. To our knowledge, this is the first report of maternal death with confirmed COVID-19 infection.