Clinical Manifestations, Laboratory Findings, and Treatment Outcomes of SARS Patients

摘要

Clinical and laboratory data on severe acute respirato-ry syndrome (SARS), particularly on the temporal progres-sion of abnormal laboratory findings, are limited. Weconducted a prospective study on the clinical, radiologic,and hematologic findings of SARS patients with pneumo-nia, who were admitted to National Taiwan UniversityHospital from March 8 to June 15, 2003. Fever was themost frequent initial symptom, followed by cough, myalgia,dyspnea, and diarrhea. Twenty-four patients had variousunderlying diseases. Most patients had elevated C-reactiveprotein (CRP) levels and lymphopenia. Other commonabnormal laboratory findings included leukopenia, throm-bocytopenia, and elevated levels of aminotransferase, lac-tate dehydrogenase, and creatine kinase. These clinicaland laboratory findings were exacerbated in most patientsduring the second week of disease. The overall case-fatal-ity rate was 19.7%. By multivariate analysis, underlying dis-ease and initial CRP level were predictive of death