The following is a summary of “Post COVID-19 pulmonary complications in outpatient setting: Insights from a cross-sectional study in a rural academic hospital,” published in the June 2023 issue of Emergency Medicine by Acharya, et al.

For a study, researchers sought to characterize post-COVID-19 pulmonary complications in patients who did not require hospitalization but experienced significant outpatient visits due to COVID-19 sequelae. The focus was on symptomatology, clinical findings, and radiological results in the specific patient group.

The study is based on a two-part cross-sectional design involving a retrospective chart review. Non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients who visited the pulmonology clinic for respiratory symptoms were analyzed twice at 12 months. The first cross-section group comprised 23 patients followed up from December 2019 to June 2021, and the second group included 53 patients followed up from June 2021 to July 2022. Unpaired t-tests and Chi-squared tests were used to analyze differences in baseline characteristics and clinical outcomes between the two groups. Post-COVID-19 symptoms were categorized into three groups (mild, moderate, and severe) based on symptom duration and the presence or absence of hypoxia.

Dyspnea on exertion (DOE) was the most common complaint in most patients in both cross-section groups (43.5% vs. 56.6%). The mean age in the first and second cross-section groups was 33 and 50 years, respectively. The majority of patients in both groups had mild and moderate symptoms (43.5% vs. 9.4%, P = 0.0007; 43.5% vs. 83%, P = 0.005). The mean duration of symptoms was 3.8 months in the first cross-section group and 10.5 months in the second cross-section group (P = 0.0001).

The study highlighted the burden of post-COVID-19 pulmonary complications in a patient group where such complications are less expected, as they did not require hospitalization during the acute phase of COVID-19. The findings underscored the importance of implementing multidisciplinary post-COVID-19 care clinics and vaccination awareness campaigns in rural areas of the US to address this existing burden.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735675723001468