Background

The novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has caused significant change in the daily life of humans, as well as in access to medical care.

Objectives

We aimed to compare the general characteristics, medical diagnoses and laboratory data of patients referred to the outpatient internal medicine clinics of our institution and to observe relevant factors that correlate with the number of hospital admissions in this population.

Material and methods

Patients who visited our outpatient clinics of internal medicine between March 2020 and June 2020 were enrolled. Age, gender, medical diagnoses, number of admissions, cause of admission and laboratory parameters on first admission were recorded. Patients who visited outpatient clinics only once were grouped as group I, and patients admitted more than once were grouped as group II. General characteristics and laboratory data of groups I and II were compared.

Results

Patients with cancer were more common in group II compared to group I (p < 000.1). Haemoglobin (Hb) (p = 0.001) was significantly lower, and red cell distribution width (RDW) (p = 0.007) was significantly higher in group II compared to group I. RDW was positively (r = 0.23, p < 0.001) correlated, and Hb inversely (r = -0.19, p < 0.001) correlated, with the number of hospital admissions in the study population.

Conclusions

We think that decreased Hb and increased RDW values in patients during the pandemic should alert physicians for possible recurrent hospital admissions in the near future and may promote taking measures to reduce multiple medical admissions.