study
Those who have recovered after severe corona courses are often impaired for a long time
People who had to be treated in hospital for a corona infection still have to deal with the consequences for a long time.
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Few people who require hospital treatment for coronavirus infection fully recover within a year. That shows a British study.
A year after being treated in hospital for Covid-19, only one in four patients felt fully recovered. This is the conclusion of a British study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine Journal. Women recover less often than men. Overweight people and patients who have had to be ventilated also have significantly worse chances of recovery.
The study looked at the health status of more than 2,000 adults discharged from 39 UK hospitals between March 2020 and April 2021. The researchers looked at recovery after five months and one year. They performed blood tests and tests of performance and organ function.
Only 26 percent of the patients said they had fully recovered after five months. A year after discharge from the hospital, the proportion rose only slightly to 28.9 percent. The most common long-term Covid symptoms observed were fatigue, muscle pain, physical slowdown, poor sleep and shortness of breath.
Obesity and female gender main risk factors
“The limited recovery at five months to one year post-hospitalization in our study in terms of symptoms, mental health, exercise capacity, organ impairment, and quality of life is striking,” said Dr. Rachel Evans from the University of Leicester, who worked on the research project. The scientists have identified risk factors for ongoing health problems after hospitalization for Covid-19. Female gender and obesity are major risk factors for long-term health problems.
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“Without effective treatments, long-term Covid could become a widespread new long-term disease,” said study co-author Christopher Brightling, of the University of Leicester.
Sources:Lancet Respiratory Medicine Journal, Communication from the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases