Coronavirus Hus: Four out of ten coronary patients treated in the intensive care unit had not recovered three months after discharge

“At that three-month period, patients said that just walking had to re-learn and go small distances at a time.”

Multi because of the corona, those in intensive care have to give up something that used to belong to their lives.

In a follow-up study of corona patients in the Helsinki and Uusimaa hospital districts (Hus), more than half of those in intensive care survived their daily lives well or fairly well without help three months after discharge from hospital, but less than half had to give up some important hobbies or not be able to return to work.

“Quite a few people have had to change their lives,” says the chief physician of Meilahti’s intensive care unit. Johanna Hästbacka Husista.

However, only 4% needed at least moderate assistance.

The first research article in the follow-up study, which began in Hus last summer, has been approved for publication and other articles are currently being finalized. There were about 70 people in the intensive care unit group and about 50 people in the inpatient care group alone, as well as in the control group. The study included those who became ill during the first and second waves of the corona last year.

The biggest challenge returning to normal life is, according to Hästbacka, a general physical weakness.

“At that three-month period, patients said that just walking had to re-learn and go small distances at a time,” Hästbacka says.

According to him, during the intensive care period, many patients lose a lot of muscle mass, which can cause weight loss of up to ten percent. This is due to both the inflammation caused by the coronavirus and the strain of intensive care.

Two-thirds of the coronary patients in the study who had undergone intensive care had been at work before they became ill. Six of the ten of them had returned to work three months after leaving home. About three in ten were on sick leave, the rest in the category of something else.

“If four out of ten have not returned to their previous job, that is a pretty big part, especially considering that working life today may not be very physically demanding for many,” says Hästbacka.

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Even a small part recovered quickly. After three months, more than a tenth of those in intensive care had, according to their own estimates, returned to their normal normal lives.

Three months there was still a clear period of recovery because there was a clear recovery between three and six months. According to Hästbacka, it would be interesting to look at the situation in a year’s time, for example.

According to an extensive Chinese study, it seems that the symptoms clearly decreased after another six months.

“88 percent of those who worked before becoming ill returned to work within a year,” says the chief physician of the Adult Intensive Care Unit at Turku University Central Hospital (Tyks). Mika Valtonen.

Valtonen says that it has been shown that a seriously ill disease increases the risk of long-term coronary heart disease. According to him, in Finland, the disease is defined as prolonged post-acute coronary heart disease when the symptoms have lasted for more than three weeks and long-term covid-19 disease when the symptoms persist for more than three months after the illness. In Finland, it has previously been estimated that about 10–40 per cent of those infected with the coronavirus would develop a long-term illness.

However, according to a recently published study based on 40 studies in the United States, up to more than half of those who were hospitalized for coronary disease became ill on a long-term basis.

Because of the corona According to Hästbacka, those in the intensive care unit are, on average, younger and have fewer underlying diseases than those in intensive care for other reasons. The average age of coronary patients admitted to the intensive care unit during the entire epidemic is 57 years.

The proportion of younger age groups among coronary patients in intensive care has increased, Valtonen says. Since September, 88 per cent of coronary patients treated effectively in Tyks have been unvaccinated, and there are more unvaccinated young people.

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Younger and better-off patients are more tolerant of intensive care, which makes it difficult to directly compare the situation of coronary patients and other patients during the discharge phase.

According to Valtonen, the average time for coronary patients in the intensive care unit is 11 days, while for others it is three days.

“We have several patients who have been here for weeks,” says Valtonen.

In this case, for example, muscle weakness caused by intensive care develops to a completely different point than in a few days.

According to Hästbacka the mental burden of intensive care has not yet been addressed much. In addition to physical weakness, difficulty breathing, and exhaustion, coronary patients in intensive care experience mental exhaustion and anxiety.

“For the first time in their lives, many are in a situation where they are in danger of dying and face their own vulnerability,” says Hästbacka.

Especially for a young person who is used to taking care of their own affairs, having to rely on the help of others can be quite a shocking experience.

According to Hästbacka, one reason for the study was to find out what problems patients experience after being removed from the ventilator.

“They clearly had delusions and wild nightmares even when awake.”

Both Hästbacka and Valtonen say that intensive care usually involves cognitive and mental health problems. Studies show that as many as four in five people in intensive care have different mental symptoms and physical dysfunction 6 to 12 months after intensive care.

In the study the coronary patients involved attended neuropsychological tests six months after returning home and answered various questionnaires before that.

Preliminary results suggest that those in intensive care performed worse on neuropsychological tests compared to those with coronary wards in the ward and at home alone. In the case of intensive care, attention was also lower when the importance of age, gender and level of education was taken into account. For men, ERP also weakened. There was also a control group in the study who had not had coronary heart disease at all.

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According to Hästbacka, the fact that a close relative waiting at home may also recover from the same disease has received little attention in the repatriation of coronary patients. If one of the families becomes ill with coronary heart disease, the others will get it easily.

Hästbacka says she heard stopping stories during her research interviews.

“The support person at home had just just discharged from the hospital,” he describes.

Getting help can also be made more difficult by the potential risk of infection or fear.

To the lungs even permanent changes may remain in the corona. Scar tissue forms in the lungs of some coronary patients. According to Hästbacka, it is not yet known exactly why some form scar tissue and others do not. Scarred lungs cannot expand as flexibly as a person inhales.

“Scar tissue also taxes the area involved in exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide,” which is the main function of the lungs.


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According to Hästbacka, attention should be paid to recovery. Surviving the disease alone is not enough.

“Our goal” is for patients to return to a meaningful life and ability to function.

The aim is to maintain the functional capacity of the intensive care patient already during the intensive care period.

“Physiotherapists are always strongly involved in the workings of efficacy. Each patient will be judged on whether they will benefit from physiotherapy on that day. ”

According to Valtonen, it would be good to treat and monitor the symptoms of the corona in a multi-professional way, because the symptoms can be so diverse and explained by several different mechanisms. Return to work should also be supported in occupational health care.

“It’s not easy to name any such one way to take care of it,” says Valtonen.

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