Anyone who has had Covid 19 disease is often far from healthy.
A consultation hour at the University Clinic in Ulm is aimed at people with long-term complaints.
In the Corona situation reports, there is only one word for them: recover.
But many people who have had Covid 19 disease are anything but healthy
.
The longer the pandemic lasts, the more the long-term consequences for the sick * come to the fore.
A research project at Ulm University Hospital has been dealing with the long-term effects of Covid 19 disease on the heart and lungs since the beginning of the year.
Corona long-term effects on the lungs, heart and vessels
The Ulm specialists for internal medicine set up a consultation for those affected in February. The offer was "tremendously accepted", as the supervising senior physician Dominik Buckert from the special outpatient clinic for Covid long-term effects on the lungs, heart and blood vessels says.
At the beginning there were more than 1,000 inquiries in a week
. While most of the patients came from the region, there were also inquiries from Switzerland or the region around Hamburg, according to Buckert.
In the meantime, at least 250 people have come to the clinic in Ulm because of complaints after a Covid 19 disease.
A first interim balance is clear.
20 percent of patients have organ damage.
Most of the remaining patients feel worse than they did before the disease, but have no damage to their organs, says Buckert.
Most of the people who come to the consultation are therefore between 40 and 50 years old.
"And actually relatively healthy, so without any chronic previous illnesses," said the senior physician.
The youngest of the slightly more male patients are around 20 years old.
Some of the patients suffer serious organ damage
In addition, an above-average number of athletes are there. Especially with athletes, the body feeling is completely different and therefore the perception of losses is more pronounced in them, explains Buckert. He roughly divides the patients into three groups. One group is above all insecure and is afraid of the possible consequences of the disease. Another person moved significantly less during the pandemic and is therefore noticing a drop in performance, says Buckert. “
And in a third group we find serious damage to the organs
.” In individual cases, of course, these groups are not so easy to separate.
The complaints are varied.
On the one hand, the patients reported neurological complaints such as finding words, taste disorders or nerve pain and numbness, says the doctor.
But also shortness of breath, especially under stress, and physical performance losses were part of it.
For neurological complaints, Buckert and his colleagues refer to other experts in the house because they focus on lung and heart diseases.
But even with a focus solely on this specialist area, Buckert says about Covid-19: "We are still in the process of understanding what we have in front of us."
Ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging examinations
In order to get to the bottom of the patient's complaints, the doctors at the Covid clinic in Ulm examine the patient step by step. What starts with a blood test, an ultrasound of the heart and a lung function test, is continued, for example, with an MRI of the heart and individual follow-up examinations, depending on the findings. In around 20 percent of patients with organ damage, doctors primarily observe cardiac muscle inflammation and the consequences thereof. These included heart failure and cardiac arrhythmias, says Buckert. “
In the case of the lungs, we observe that the structure of the lungs changes and that poor gas exchange is possible.” The result is shortness of breath.
The previous findings of the Ulm research project with its focus on heart and lung damage only cover part of the long-term corona consequences and are only the beginning of the more in-depth discussion of this topic, also known as long-covid or post-covid syndrome describe. Buckert emphasizes the importance of exchanging information with other clinics on long-term corona consequences.
Their feedback coincided with what they had gained in terms of knowledge so far.
In addition, the feedback indicated that the first findings of the Ulm doctors are quite representative, says Buckert.
(dpa) * Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
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