A comparative study to evaluate the use of saline nasal lavage and gargling in patients with Covid-19 infection.

Abstract

Introduction: The infection caused by COVID-19 ranges from mild to moderate infection, but it can also cause severe infection and death in some people mostly in people who are old, or immunocompromisedSARS-CoV-2 has shown evidence of having higher capacity of binding to human cells and can settle in upper and lower portion of the respiratory tract it being the two important hotspots. Symptoms localized to the upper respiratory tract are mild which usually includes anosmia/hyposmia, ageusia/ dysgeusia, rhinitis along with sore throat. Material and methods: This study included individuals who were diagnosed with COVID-19 having mild symptoms of the disease which could be managed at their homes.Random assignment (50/50 chance) of subjects was done into two groups (A and B) for this study. Participants in group A were asked to perform the nasal washing and gargling with salt water up to 10 times a day for 14 days or until they felt better.Results:The leading cause for hospitalization for 15 (53.57%) people was that the oxygen saturation fell to below 93. Some scores compared between the two groups showed significant results in parameters of headache, postnasal drip, anosmia, sinusitis, sore throat, body ache, dry cough by unpaired two tailed P test. The age groups of 26 to 35, and 56 to 65 had comparatively higher values of adherence as compared to different age groups.Conclusion:The study demonstrates the hypothesis that nasal irrigation and saline gargling can have promising results to reduce the severity of COVID-19 infection when initiated within 24 hours of a positive test.