AUTHOR=Calderón-Moreno Jesús , Delgado-Rodriguez María Jesús , Juárez-Vela Raúl , Tejada-Garrido Clara Isabel , de Viñaspre-Hernández Regina Ruiz , Burgos-Esteban Amaya , Sánchez-Conde Pilar , Andreu-Fernández Vicente , Gea-Caballero Vicente , Santos-Sanchez Jose Angel , Quintana-Diaz Manuel , Andrés-Esteban Eva María 

TITLE=Approximation to the economic cost of healthcare for hypertensive patients diagnosed with COVID-19

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=12

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1333081

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2024.1333081

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=<sec id="sec1"><title>Introduction</title><p>Many researchers have focused their studies on hypertension due to its over-representation among COVID-19 patients. Both retrospective and observational studies conducted close to the Wuhan area have reported that hypertension is the most common comorbidity observed in patients affected by COVID-19.</p></sec><sec id="sec2"><title>Objective</title><p>Our objective is that patients with arterial hypertension have a worse prognosis in terms of evolution leading to higher costs.</p></sec><sec id="sec3"><title>Methods</title><p>A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted. A total of 3,581 patients from La Paz University Hospital (LPUH) during the period between 15 July 2020 and 31 July 2020 were included in this study.</p></sec><sec id="sec4"><title>Results</title><p>It should be noted that 40.71% of the patients were hypertensive. As expected, hypertension was associated with men, among whom we observed a higher prevalence and a higher age (median age of 77 years (IQI: 65–85) versus 52 years (IQI: 37–64), <italic>p</italic>-value &lt; 0.001). Hypertensive patients had a higher prevalence of dyspnea (52.14% vs. 47.15%, <italic>p</italic>-value = 0.004) and altered awareness (14.89% vs. 4.30%, <italic>p</italic>-value &lt;0.001). The non-parametric Kaplan–Meier curve estimates the survival of patients in the two study groups. We can see how patients with hypertension have a higher associated mortality, with the difference being statistically significant, <italic>p</italic>-value (log-rank) = 0.004. Only for the appearance of complications during hospitalization, the group of hypertensive patients reached the figure of €1,355,901.71 compared to the total of 421,403.48 € for normotensive patients.</p></sec><sec id="sec5"><title>Conclusion</title><p>Our study shows the worse clinical evolution of patients with COVID-19 in terms of associated morbidity and mortality. It also shows that the cost of managing patients with hypertension is greater than that of managing normotensive patients.</p></sec>