Persistence of COVID-19 Symptoms and Quality of Life at Three and Twelve Months after Hospital Discharge.

Background and

Objectives

Medical and public recognition of "long-COVID or post-COVID syndrome", as well as its impact on the quality of life (QoL), is required to better address the disease burden.

Objectives

We aimed to describe the persistence of COVID-19 symptoms and QoL among patients at three and twelve months after their discharge from the hospital. Materials and

Methods

We conducted an observational, prospective, and longitudinal analytic study from September 2021 to April 2022. To measure QoL, we used a validated version of the 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36).

Results

We included 68 patients in the study. A total of 54 (79.4%) patients reported at least one persistent symptom at three months vs. 52 (76.4%) at twelve months (p = 0.804). Some persistent symptoms (myalgia, alopecia, and cough) decreased significantly at twelve months (50% vs. 30.9%, 29.4% vs. 13.2%, and 23.5% vs. 7.4%; respectively, p = 0.007); in contrast, other persistent symptoms (sleep-wake and memory disorders) were more frequent (5.9% vs. 32.4% and 4.4% vs. 20.6%; respectively, p = ≤0.001). Regarding QoL, a statistically significant improvement was observed in some scores over time, p = ≤0.037. At twelve months, dyspnea, myalgia, and depression were risk factors associated with a poor physical component summary (PCS), p = ≤0.027, whereas anxiety, depression, and fatigue were associated with a poor mental component summary (MCS), p = ≤0.015.

Conclusion

As the proportion of persistent symptoms at twelve months is high, we suggest that patients must continue under long-term follow up to reclassify, diagnose, and treat new onset symptoms/diseases.