Goel Nitin, Goyal Nitesh, Spalgais Sonam, Mrigpuri Parul, Varma-Basil Mandira, Khanna Madhu, Nagaraja Ravishankar, Menon Balakrishnan, Kumar Raj
Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Viswanathan Chest Hospital, Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute, University of Delhi, Delhi, India.
Department of Microbiology, Viswanathan Chest Hospital, Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute, University of Delhi, Delhi, India.
Thorac Res Pract. 2023 Jan;24(1):22-28. doi: 10.5152/ThoracResPract.2023.21307.
New-onset or persistent symptoms beyond after 4 weeks from COVID-19 are termed "long-COVID." Whether the initial severity of COVID-19 has a bearing on the clinicoradiological manifestations of long COVID is an area of interest.
We did an observational analysis of the long-COVID patients after categorizing them based on their course of COVID-19 illness into mild, moderate, and severe groups. The clinical and radiological profile was compared across these groups.
Out of 150 long-COVID patients recruited in the study, about 79% (118), 14% (22), and 7% (10) had a history of mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19, respectively. Fatigue (P = .001), breathlessness (P = .001), tachycardia (P = .002), tachypnea (P < .001), raised blood pressure (P < .001), crepitations (P = .04), hypoxia at rest (P < .001), significant desaturation in 6-minute walk test (P = .27), type 1 respiratory failure (P = .001), and type 2 respiratory failure (P = .001) were found to be significantly higher in the long-COVID patients with a history of severe COVID-19. These patients also had the highest prevalence of abnormal chest X-ray (60%) and honeycombing in computed tomography scan thorax (25%, P = .027).
The course of long COVID bears a relationship with initial COVID-19 severity. Patients with severe COVID-19 are prone to develop more serious long-COVID manifestations.
新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19）发病4周后出现的新发或持续症状被称为“长新冠”。COVID-19的初始严重程度是否与长新冠的临床和影像学表现有关是一个备受关注的领域。
我们对长新冠患者进行了观察性分析，根据他们的COVID-19病程将其分为轻度、中度和重度组。对这些组的临床和影像学特征进行了比较。
在该研究招募的150例长新冠患者中，分别约有79%（118例）、14%（22例）和7%（10例）有轻度、中度和重度COVID-19病史。疲劳（P = 0.001）、呼吸困难（P = 0.001）、心动过速（P = 0.002）、呼吸急促（P < 0.001）、血压升高（P < 0.001）、啰音（P = 0.04）、静息时低氧（P < 0.001）、6分钟步行试验中显著氧饱和度下降（P = 0.27）、Ⅰ型呼吸衰竭（P = 0.001）和Ⅱ型呼吸衰竭（P = 0.001）在有重度COVID-19病史的长新冠患者中显著更高。这些患者胸部X线异常（60%）和胸部计算机断层扫描蜂窝状改变（25%，P = 0.027）的患病率也最高。
长新冠的病程与初始COVID-19的严重程度有关。患有重度COVID-19的患者更容易出现更严重的长新冠表现。
