Whole-body hyperthermia as part of a multimodal treatment for patients with post-covid syndrome - a case series.

BACKGROUND

Post-Covid syndrome (PCS) has been an ongoing challenge since the COVID-19 pandemic. Relatively little is known about the effect of whole-body hyperthermia (WBH) in the treatment of PCS.

METHODS

We retrospectively analyzed the data of patients with PCS who were treated as inpatients with a multimodal integrative therapy approach including WBH. The primary outcome comprised changes in Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue (FACIT-F) between T0 (at hospital admission) and T2 (four weeks after discharge), secondary outcomes were changes in Fatigue Impact Scale (FIS-D), Multidimensional Dyspnea Profile (MDP) and Covid-Associated Symptoms (CAS) between T0-T1 (at discharge) and T0-T2.

RESULTS

FACIT-F yielded a significant increase ( < 0.001) between T0 (19.1 ± 8.4) and T2 (29.9 ± 13.0) (primary outcome), indicating an improved health status. While FIS-D and CAS scores improved significantly between T0 and T2, dyspnea parameters improved only between T0 and T1. 63% of respondents identified WBH as an effective treatment.

CONCLUSIONS

Study results provide preliminary evidence for potentially positive effects of WBH in the setting of this study, in which it is embedded in a multimodal therapy approach. The results should be substantiated by future RCTs to identify specific effects of individual therapy components.