Neurological symptoms with COVID-19 serve as 'important predictor' of poor outcomes
By Admin | May 14, 2021
Patients with COVID-19 and certain neurological problems had longer hospital lengths of stay and higher in-hospital mortality, among other adverse outcomes, according to findings from a prospective cohort study of 211 hospitalized patients.
Other adverse outcomes included increased risk for requiring mechanical ventilation and decreased likelihood to be discharged to home. Researchers presented results from the University of Pittsburgh/University of Pittsburgh Medical Center site in the Global Consortium Study of Neurological Dysfunction in COVID-19, a tier 1, international, multicenter study on neurological dysfunction in COVID-19, at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting, which was held virtually.
“We have little information about how frequently neurological conditions occur among everyone with COVID-19,” Nicole C. Paul, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told Healio Neurology. “We also don’t know the impact of having neurological symptoms on the patient’s outcomes, both in the acute phase and long term. In this study, we looked at a cohort of COVID-19 patients ill enough to require hospitalization and systematically determined the frequency of neurological symptoms and dysfunctions, as well as specifically looked at encephalopathy as a prominent syndrome in this population.”
Paul and colleagues also assessed how these factors affected the patient’s risk for death during acute hospitalization, level of disability at hospital discharge according to modified Rankin score and likelihood of return to home following hospital discharge. They included participants aged 18 years or older with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection who had been admitted to two hospitals in the same health care network between March 22, 2020, and Nov. 15, 2020. They excluded eight patients with severe pre-existing baseline neurologic dysfunction, including coma or vegetative state, that hindered identification of new or worsening neurologic symptoms. Depending on distribution of data, Paul and colleagues compared continuous variables using either Student’s t or Wilcoxon rank sum test.
The researchers identified 203 patients (47.3% women) with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, for whom the average age was 64.8 years and of whom 70.4% had a BMI of 25 or greater. A total of 135 (66.5%) cohort participants exhibited neurological symptoms during their hospital stay.
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For more info please read, Neurological symptoms with COVID-19 serve as 'important predictor' of poor outcomes, by Healio
