Effect of COVID 19 pandemic on the neurology department hospitalization with analysis of the neurological complications secondary to COVID 19 and vaccination against COVID 19.

OBJECTIVE

We investigated the effect of the pandemic on neurological hospitalizations and complications associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection or vaccinations.

METHODS

We retrospectively analyzed data of patients hospitalized in our neurology division from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2022 as the opt-out study. We classified the neurological diseases into nine subgroups, evaluated changes of neurological disease characteristics, and analyzed patients hospitalized with the complications from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection or after the coronavirus disease 2019 vaccination over three eras based on the pandemic stages: (1) pre-pandemic, (2) during the pandemic but before vaccines, and (3) during the pandemic with vaccines.

RESULTS

Overall, 1756 patients were included in the analyses. The patient characteristics significantly changed throughout the pandemic ( < 0.01). Although the number of autoimmune cases did not change throughout the pandemic ( = 0.53), that of psychological cases and that of unknown cases were significantly changed ( < 0.05,  < 0.01). There were four infectious cases and 11 cases following vaccination from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2022. The 11 postvaccination cases involved 10 kinds of neurological diseases.

CONCLUSIONS

The neurological characteristics significantly changed throughout the pandemic and there were diverse neurological complications following vaccinations.