A new study suggests that more than half of long-term Covid patients suffer organ damage a year after the onset of symptoms.

Even those who were not seriously ill at the time the virus was diagnosed report problems with extreme shortness of breath and mental distress among persistent symptoms.

The study, the results of which were published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, involved 536 people.

Six months after their initial coronavirus diagnosis, the patients underwent an MRI that revealed ongoing health problems, with 62% of the participants suffering from organ damage.

In particular, according to the results of the study, 59% of patients with a long course of Covid had a problem in one organ, and 29% had a problem in several organs.

However, there was a decrease in symptoms between 6 and 12 months after their initial diagnosis, with a subset of people experiencing:

• extreme shortness of breath to decrease from 39% to 30%,
• cognitive impairment from 48% to 38%;
• poor health affecting their quality of life from 57% to 45%.

It is noted that only 13% of those who took part in the study were hospitalized when they were first diagnosed with Covid.

As Amitava Banerjee, professor of clinical data science, points out, there is “great concern” about the impact of long-term Covid on patients’ quality of life, especially among healthcare professionals.

“Many of the healthcare workers in our survey were not sick, but 19 out of 172 healthcare workers still had symptoms and were off work for an average of 180 days,” he notes.

Source: skynews