Patients and Study Design
In this retrospective study, we included the inpatients who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 and received HCQ from March 10th to May 30th, 2020 in our two affiliated hospitals.
The case definition of World Health Organization used for diagnosis of COVID-19 includes the probable and confirmed cases. The confirmation was defined as the positive viral result of COVID-19 infection, while the probable case was defined as inconclusive or a suspect case for testing for COVID-19(WHO, 2020). We included defined and probable cases with COVID-19.
We analyzed COVID-19 patients who has initial and follow-up ECGs. We excluded the patients who have neither initial nor follow up ECG, or who were transferred from other centres while using HCQ. A hospital COVID-19 team including infectious disease\souts, internal medicine, chest medicine, intensive care unit physicians managed all the cases with regular meetings. The ECGs were examined by the cardiologists to assess QTc intervals. Biosafety monitoring document was used by hospital pharmacy department to follow up drug related adverse events.