EC Clinical and Medical Case Reports

Introduction: COVID-19 exposes patients to new, recurrent, or ongoing conditions that affect their health. Patients experience different symptoms that can last beyond 12 weeks after first being infected with COVID- 19 (Post Covid-19 syndrome). Even the acutely asymptomatic patients later developed Post Covid-19 syndrome. These circumstances can present as diverse types or combinations of health problems for different lengths of time.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of 217 SARS‐CoV‐2 laboratory‐positive patients (SARS‐CoV‐2+) between March 2020 and July 2021. Inclusion criteria: all patients 18 years and older with a previous diagnosis of COVID-19. Charts were reviewed to find patients with persistent problems after a COVID-19 infection or new diagnosis during the acute infection that persisted or appeared 12 weeks after having a SARS-CoV-2 positive test. Also, we designed a population-based survey to assess the persistence of the symptoms. No protected health information was collected, and verbal consent obtained.

Results: Of 217 patients included in the study, the median age was 68 years old, and the most common long terms effects of COVID-19 were anosmia and ageusia at 15.7% followed by dyspnea with 7.8%. Depression was diagnosed in 6% of patients. Cardiopulmonary, neurologic, and gastrointestinal symptoms were also found to be present in several patients.

Conclusions: COVID-19 may cause multiorgan system impairment with many survivors experiencing cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological, psychiatric, and gastrointestinal system compromise.

Keywords: Long Term COVID-19 Effect; Complication; SARS-Cov-2; Anosmia; Ageusia; Dyspnea; Depression

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