Laboratory monitoring during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is essential in providing emergency care to patients with COVID-19.

OBJECTIVE

To determine the critical values of laboratory tests in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia for optimizing the treatment.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Case histories of 6151 patients were retrospectively analyzed at the St.-Petersburg City Multi-field Hospital No. 2 redesigned for providing medical care to COVID-19 patients between March 30, 2020 and July 26, 2020. All patients were retrospectively divided into 3 groups: group 1 — patients without mechanical ventilation (n=5646 (92%)); group 2 — invasive mechanical ventilation without lethal outcome (n=69 (1%)); group 3 — invasive mechanical ventilation with lethal outcome (n=436 (7%)).

RESULTS

Considering literature data, we distinguished the following perspective tests: ferritin, leukocyte count, absolute neutrophil count, absolute lymphocyte count, platelet count, C-reactive protein, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, total bilirubin, troponin I, creatinine, and urea. Medians and 25— 75% percentiles were calculated for all laboratory tests in 3 groups. We compared the results between all groups and assessed their reference intervals for the final choice of critical values.

CONCLUSION

The authors propose to use their results as reference critical values of laboratory tests for assessing the condition of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.