LAUSR

Introduction On January 30th of 2020, the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a health emergency. In Colombia the first case was reported on March 6th of 2020. The disease has unfavorable outcomes and mortality in patients with high risk factors like solid-organ transplant recipients. In Colombia the data of the behavior disease in liver transplant patients are limited. Objectives To describe the prevalence, need of admission to hospital, complications and mortality of COVID-19 in liver transplant recipients. Methods A descriptive study of case series was performed from March 1st of 2020 to January 31st of 2021 in liver transplant recipients at Fundación Cardioinfantil-IC in Bogotá, Colombia. An analysis of clinical variables, severity laboratories, imaging and clinical follow-up were performed. Qualitative variables were described in percentage and quantitative variables were applied to a normality test using Kolmogorov Smirnov and Shapiro Wilk and the results were expressed as medians and IRQ or means and SD. Results Out of 540 adults liver transplant recipients on Fundación Cardioinfantil-IC, 34 patients (6.2%) were diagnosed with Covid 19, median age 62 years (IQR: 26), 20 (58%) male, 13 (38.2%) were admitted to hospitalization, and 4 (11.7%) required ICU. More frequent symptoms were fever in 17/34 patients (50%), cough in 17/34 (50%) and dyspnea 10/34 (29.4%). Ten patients (29.4%) had pneumonia as radiographic findings. Four patients required mechanical ventilation. Complications like acute renal injury were found in 3 patients, 1 patient required renal replacement therapy and 1 patient had gastrointestinal bleeding. 3 patients died (8.8%) on average 14 days of hospital length in ICU. Conclusion Although the group of liver transplant patients is considered to be at high risk for unfavorable outcomes in SARS COV2 infection, the data on mortality and complications were similar to the few data described in the literature.