The study, published on April 10, 2024, in the journal Critical Care Medicine, shows the transformative effect of SARS-CoV-2 on the lives of those people, most of whom had to be connected to mechanical ventilators for an average of one month.
Too sick to be sent to a nursing home or vocational rehabilitation facility, those patients were transferred to special hospitals called acute long-term care hospitals (LTACHs). These hospitals specialize in weaning patients off ventilators and offering rehabilitative care, and they have played an important role. role in the response to the pandemic.
Of the 156 participants in the study, 64% reported having persistent impairments after one year, adding physical (57%), respiratory (49%), psychiatric (24%) and cognitive (15%) disabilities. Nearly half, or 47%, had more than one type of problem. And 19% still needed supplemental oxygen.
Long-term follow-up is helping to determine the extent of medical disorders faced by those who contracted severe COVID at the beginning of the pandemic.
“We have millions of survivors of the world’s most severe and widespread COVID disease,” said study first author Anil N. Makam, MD, MAS, associate professor of medicine at UCSF. long-term recovery and disabilities, and to provide a nuanced perception of their life-changing experience. “
Disability due to long-term stays
The researchers recruited another 156 people who had been transferred for COVID to one of nine LTACHs in Nebraska, Texas, Georgia, Kentucky and Connecticut between March 2020 and February 2021. They interviewed them by phone or online a year after their hospitalization. The average total length of stay in the hospital and the LTACH for the organization is approximately two months. Their average age was 65 and at most said they were healthy before contracting COVID.
In addition to their lingering ailments due to COVID, participants also suffered discomfort due to their long hospital stays, adding painful strain sores and nerve damage that limited the use of their arms or legs.
“Many of the participants we interviewed were very upset about those complications, so preventing them from being in the first position is key to recovery,” Makam said.
While 79% say they have not returned to their previous state of health, 99% have returned home and 60% of those who were hired in the past said they have returned to work.
They were incredibly grateful to have survived and described their survival as a “miracle. “But his recovery has taken longer than expected.
The findings underscore that a user who has survived such a serious illness may have persistent fitness problems.
“The long-term impairments we observed are not unusual in survivors of any severe prolonged illness, are not expressed in COVID, and are addressed through multidisciplinary rehabilitation,” Makam said.
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Materials provided through the University of California – San Francisco. Original written by Victoria Colliver. Note: Content is subject to replacement in taste and length.
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