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Long rehabilitation for corona patients after IC: PTSD and amnesia NOW

Bedsores, a huge decrease in muscle strength and a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These are just a few complaints that corona patients can suffer from for a long time if they have been in intensive care (IC) for a long time. In conversation with NU.nl, Coen van Bennekom, rehabilitation doctor at rehabilitation center Heliomare, explains which complaints corona patients suffer after they have left the ICU.

Van Bennekom knows that the turning point will come after about four days for corona patients who have been hospitalized. It is continuously monitored how much oxygen a patient has in the blood and after four days it either goes better or it suddenly goes much worse.

If it suddenly gets worse, recording on the IC is often necessary. Corona patients have to go to respiration there because they do not receive enough oxygen on their own. Connecting and inserting the ventilator is not a pleasant experience, so patients are put into a coma.

According to Van Bennekom, this causes patients to experience confusion and PTSD after recovery from their ICU admission. “They are brought to IC from one moment to the next. For non-COVID patients, an IC admission is often announced, but because corona patients are deteriorating so quickly, they cannot.”

“Patients wake up in fear”

The nurses in intensive care are all wearing protective clothing, so they are not recognizable. “During those exciting moments, family cannot be present. Patients are put into a coma in fear and as a result they often wake up in fear,” said the rehabilitation doctor, who is also involved in research into the rehabilitation process of COVID patients.

After leaving intensive care, corona patients almost all need psychological help, Van Bennekom sees. “But that also applies to their relatives. They still have the idea that their husband or wife is dying and they cannot be present at the IC. That is very difficult for them.”

In addition to anxiety disorders, former corona patients who have been on the IC also suffer from confusion and concentration problems. “They are disoriented and have difficulty reasoning and organizing. Often they no longer know what day or date it is,” says the professor by special appointment at the University of Amsterdam.

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“People drown in their own fluid”

Because the corona virus fills the lungs with fluid, “people drown in their own fluid,” says Van Bennekom. “Ventilation cannot do anything about that, because there is simply too little lung surface to absorb oxygen. This can have consequences for organs if too little oxygen goes there. It can cause serious memory problems, for example.”

IC patients also take a good coat physically. The nerves can be affected by lying down for a long time and per day patients lose about 3 percent of muscle strength, and that loss of muscle strength is very fast, according to the doctor. “Some people can stand with difficulty and if they can they get exhausted very quickly. After getting out of bed and sitting in a chair, people are sometimes completely exhausted.”

After about ten days, most corona patients who come off the IC are “reasonably mobile”. But it can take a long time before someone is really old again. “It is sometimes said: one day IC is seven days of rehabilitation,” says Van Bennekom. Many corona patients have been on IC for about twenty days, so that means rehabilitating for about five months.

It is still unclear how long the total recovery will take

The UvA professor cannot yet say how long it will take for corona patients to fully recover from their IC admission. “We have to wait and see. The virus is so new that we have to be half a year ahead before we can make such a statement. We don’t really know.”

He can imagine that there are patients who will never be completely old again. “Especially if damage has been caused by oxygen shortage. That is often irreparable.”

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