Recovery from Long Covid was found to be less likely one year after hospitalisation for some groups of patients, a new study reports.
Scientists found that the chances of full recovery 12 months after hospitalisation were lower for women (32 percent), obese people (50 percent), and those who had mechanical ventilation in hospital (58 percent).
The study found that just one in four UK patients are fully recovered a year after being hospitalised.Long Covid - in which people suffer from symptoms for weeks or months - is becoming a "highly prevalent" new long-term condition and effective interventions are "urgently required", said researchers.Scientists studied 2,320 patients after hospitalisation to determine the impact of Long Covid in an article published by The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.The most common ongoing symptoms were fatigue, muscle pain, physically slowing down, poor sleep, and breathlessness.Coronavirus patients from 39 NHS hospitals agreed to five month and one year follow-up assessments in addition to their clinical care.
Their recovery was evaluated using patient-reported outcome measures, physical performance, and organ function at 5 months and 1 year after hospital discharge.The researchers also took samples of participants' blood at the five month visit to analyse it for the presence of various inflammatory proteins.A third of patients completed both the five month and 1-year visits at the time of this analysis.