{"id":2180,"date":"2021-08-15T16:59:18","date_gmt":"2021-08-15T16:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=2180"},"modified":"2021-08-15T16:59:18","modified_gmt":"2021-08-15T16:59:18","slug":"the-problem-of-long-haul-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=2180","title":{"rendered":"The Problem of \u2018Long Haul\u2019 COVID"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

More and more patients are dealing with major symptoms that linger for months<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authors: By\u00a0Carolyn Barber<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0December 29, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was just a couple of months into the pandemic when patients in online support groups began describing the phenomenon. In some emergency departments, they said, their complaints were largely being dismissed\u2014or at the very least diminished\u2014by health care professionals. The patients felt they were not being heard, or perhaps even were outright disbelieved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The common thread through these comments was a basic one. Each of the patients had already been infected with COVID-19 and presumably had recovered, yet each was still dealing with symptoms of the disease\u2014sometimes vague, sometimes nonspecific\u2014that simply would not go away. Physicians and nurses, already overloaded with emergent cases of the virus, were baffled, often searching for other, more benign explanations for what they were being told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We now have a term for those patients\u2014and the truth is, \u201clong hauler\u201d only begins to describe the COVID-related ordeals they are enduring. Of all the facets of the virus we have dealt with in 2020, this one may ultimately prove the most difficult to recognize, much less combat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long-haul COVID patients carry their symptoms well beyond what we\u2019ve come to understand as a \u201cnormal\u201d course of recovery. It can last for weeks. For some long haulers, it has been months\u2014and counting. And to the consternation of physicians and nurses on the front lines, the symptoms of these patients often present as so varied and relatively common that they defy a solid COVID-related diagnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a patient comes to the emergency department (E.D.) complaining of dizziness, forgetfulness and headache, for example, is that long-haul COVID or something else entirely? How about fatigue? A persistent cough? Muscle aches and insomnia? Relapsing fevers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With little to go on, and lacking clinical guidance, some of us in the E.D. <\/strong>have instructed our patients to go home, get more rest, \u201ctry to relax.\u201d We\u2019ve offered reassurances that everything would be okay with more time, checked off the final diagnosis box for something like anxiety<\/a> or chronic fatigue on our computers, and moved on to see our next patients.\u2028<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there\u2019s a growing body of evidence to suggest that a surprising number of people are, in fact, COVID long haulers, and that hospital emergency departments and clinics may be dealing with them for months and months to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For More Information: https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/the-problem-of-long-haul<\/a>-covid\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More and more patients are dealing with major symptoms that linger for months Authors: By\u00a0Carolyn Barber\u00a0on\u00a0December 29, 2020 It was just a couple of months into the pandemic when patients […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[687,769,101,787,169,823,289,866,561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anxiety","category-cough","category-covid-19","category-dizziness","category-fatigure","category-headache-symptoms-covid-19","category-long-haul-disease","category-memory-deficit","category-symptoms-covid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}