CONVALESCENT PLASMA IN PATIENTS WITH CORONAVIRUS INFECTION
Purpose. To study the effectiveness of convalescent plasma in patients with coronavirus infection COVID-19. Material and methods. The trial was done in December 2020 - February 2021. It included 103 patients (59 men, 44 women), aged 40 - 97 who were hospitalized with coronavirus infection COVID-19. All patients were divided into two groups depending on the prescribed therapy: studied group (n = 57) - targeted therapy added with convalescent plasma transfusion; control group (n=46) - targeted therapy. The effectiveness of convalescent plasma transfusion was assessed by two criteria: the first one - dynamics of clinical and laboratory parameters (saturation, C-reactive protein, ferritin, lymphocytes); the second one - comparison of the disease course in both groups (% of patients transferred to ICU) and the mortality rate in both groups. Results and discussion. The convalescent plasma transfusion promoted the decrease of inflammation markers and the increase of oxygen saturation. In patients from the control group, the increase of inflammation markers was recorded throughout the entire observation period. Conclusion. It has been established that the transfusion of convalescent plasma can reduce inflammation markers in patients with coronavirus infection COVID-19 compared to patients with the same disease who received only targeted therapy. However, the transfusion of convalescent plasma does not change the intergroup mortality ratio of 17.5% vs 15.2% (p=0.7518).