Introduction:

Dexamethasone is a medication that demonstrated a decrease in mortality in SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia. The usefulness of other corticosteroids, dose and their duration to improve this clinical result is unknown.

Objective:

To compare the mortality of adult patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia treated with dexamethasone versus methylprednisolone at the Hospital Nacional of Itauguá, Paraguay.

Materials and Methods:

Ambispective study. Ninety seven patients were included, 52 received dexamethasone and 45 methylprednisolone. A non-probabilistic sampling of consecutive cases was used. The variables were subjected to descriptive and analytical statistics. The protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Hospital Nacional. The authors do not present conflicts of interest.

Results:

All patients entered with 4 (WHO) vaulting pneumonia. No significant differences were found in mortality between both groups. When applying an age stratified analysis, in patients <65 years who received dexamethasone the mortality was 15.8% while those who received methylprednisolone did not die (p 0.03). In the ≥65 years group, mortality in those who received dexamethasone was 29.4% vs. 21.4% in those who received methylprednisolone (p 0.7).

Conclusions:

In patients <65 years treated with dexamethasone, mortality was much higher than in those who received methylprednisolone, since in the latter group no deaths were recorded.

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