About 40% Covid recovered patients suffer long-term health issues: Study

After recovering from Covid, patients have continued to struggle with weakness/fatigue and gastrointestinal issues along with newer symptoms like insomnia and neuropsychiatric issues.

Hyderabad: A survey of patients who had recovered from Covid-19 across the country taken up by doctors from City-based Asian Institute of Gastroenterology (AIG) Hospitals has indicated that 40 per cent of them struggle with long-term health complications of Covid-19. The study, which is available in the pre-print form, indicated that after recovering from Covid, patients have continued to struggle with weakness/fatigue and gastrointestinal issues along with newer symptoms like insomnia and neuropsychiatric issues. The pan-India survey covered about 2,038 Covid recovered patients.

“Post-Covid symptoms are common in patients who recovered from Covid-19. These symptoms are more often noted in patients who received steroid therapy. The symptomatology is present in a significant number of patients and requires to be addressed seriously,” the AIG Hospital doctors in the research paper said.

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“We were seeing many such patients in our hospital but this survey gave us the true picture of the post-Covid syndrome. If this is an indication to go by, then we are looking at over one crore people in India who have recovered from Covid-19 but are still having certain symptoms,” said Dr D Nageshwar Reddy, Chairman, AIG Hospitals.

Dr Reddy further added that: “We also asked in our survey about the usage of steroids in these patients during their Covid-19 treatment and found out that 74 per cent hospitalised patients received steroids but 34 per cent required oxygen. We believe there is some correlation between irrational use of steroids and post-Covid complications because as per the guidelines, we are supposed to give steroids only to those who require Oxygen. Further research will be required to ascertain the impact of steroids”.

Looking at the urgent need to address this pertinent issue of Post-Covid complications, AIG Hospitals on Monday announced the launch of its Post-Covid Care Clinic, comprising of expert doctors from multiple medical disciplines.