BENGALURU: Many post covid problems have lately come to light, from having fever, shortness of breath, myalgia, fatigue, kidney ailments, loss of appetite, loss of hair, a new study published in the Lancet journal has showcased significant cognitive deficits on recovered Covid-19 patients.
The study was done in UK and the researchers had collected data from 81,337 subjects, over 12,000 subjects reported contracting COVID-19. The severe the covid 19 case, the more were the cognitive problems. The study also pointed out that the patients on ventilators showed a declining by 7 IQ points. Majorly cognitive deficits detected in the study were seen in tasks evaluating reasoning, planning and selective attention.
Set of health professionals in the city as well pointed out to such cases being seen in many covid patients. Generally the cognitive defects include, poor attention/ concentration, memory impairment, planning impairment, language dysfunction.
Dr Shiva Kumar R, Senior Consultant Neurologist & Epileptologist, Sakra World Hospital said, "The memory problem , cognitive issues, and attention problems have all been seen amongst the post covid patients. . Some inspite of having mild infection have complained of having mild memory loss problem, like forgetfulness, particularly in the elderly age group above the 60 years of age. Generally the cases we are seeing are two months after recovery. Highly functioning individuals on a daily basis like bank manager and others started to face issues in executing their daily activities as well as memory problems."
In one of the case study reported at a private hospital, a 30-year-old IT professional who was into coding and was diagnosed with covid in the month of April with mild symptoms and discharged days later, found it difficulty to concentrate on her work and had recurrent mood swings. Three months post recovery, she could still not concentrate on her job and could not perform coding and wasn't even able to work as her routing schedule 10 hours a day.
Dr Kumar added that during the second wave such cases have come to notice. " As the first wave numbers were small and not much was known about the virus and the after effects , many cases went noticed. But now with more information we are able to diagnose such cases. Usually most of the patients who are on oxygen and ventilators are affected the cells involved in memory require the highest energy, but when a person is on oxygen concentration the cells become slow which get affects the memory cells and hence the cognitive and neurological disorders have been reported." Said Dr Kumar.
While Dr Chetan Kumar,Consultant Neurologist
Columbia Asia Hospitals Whitefield ( A Unit of Manipal Hospitals ) pointed out that off late they have come across recovered covid patients reporting presenting to neurology OPD with non specific tingling sensation involving feet and hands. "Some patients have even complained about forgetfulness, poor attention, brain fogging and another set of patients with worsening migraine attacks and some unfortunately develop strokes of varying severity who have had covid 19 infection." said Dr Chetan.
Dr. Jagadish Hiremath, Medical Director at Ace Suhas Multispeciality Hospital said "Almost all Covid patients suffer neurological disability in a varying scale. This is because Covid affects nerve cells due to which brain activity does slow a bit after a patient recovers from Covid. This is why majority of the patients show cognitive deficits after they recover from Covid infection."