Causes of death in 750 partial autopsies of deceased with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection
Keywords:
COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, autopsy, causes of deathAbstract
Introduction: At the dawn of the year 2020, a new pandemic produced by SARS-CoV-2 appears. Facing an unknown disease imposed the need for the autopsy to reveal what happened to the deceased.
Objective: To expose the experiences achieved in the study of the causes of death in 750 partial autopsies of deceased with confirmed SARS-CoV-2.
Methods: It was carried out a descriptive cross-sectional study by the Anatomic Pathology Task Force Group, where tissues from confirmed SARS-CoV-2 deaths were studied after the performance of minimally invasive autopsy in different hospitals in the country from March 2020 to April 2022. Age, dates of circulation of the strains (D 614G (G), Beta (B), Delta (D), y Omicron (O)), comorbidities and causes of death were analyzed. The data obtained was collected in a database.
Results: Most of the deaths occurred during the circulation of strains B and D. When strain O was circulating, the Cuban population was almost totally vaccinated. More than half of deceased presented up to three comorbidities. High blood pressure and diabetes mellitus were the most frequent comorbidities. In the series of cases studied the frequency of elderly (older than 60 years old) represented more than half of the cases. The main cause of direct death among these patients was the lung permeability edema. COVID-19 occurred as the main direct cause of death in 77,6% of the cases. The histology of the systemic inflammatory response was a constant among the deceased studied.
Conclusions: Minimally invasive autopsies made it possible to determine the causes of death in these patients; allowing us to specify that modulating and treating these causes was necessary to save lives.
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