Residual brain damage in long-term Covid patients is underestimated and not recognized in the HSE‘s plan to treat the condition, a leading infectious disease consultant warned today
Rof Jack Lambert, of the Mater Hospital, in Dublin, told the Oireachtas Health Committee that in 2021 a questionnaire of patients with Lung Covid at his clinic showed that for a year many had persistent brain fog, cognitive problems, exhaustion, sleep disturbances and psychological problems. they hadn’t before.
The experience of long Covid patients can resemble a person who has had a closed head injury.
He said by the time the HSE’s draft-long Covid guidelines were drafted a year ago, the “goal posts” had shifted.
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“The plan focuses on early follow-up after Covid-19 with a group of eight lung specialists and a cadre of dieticians and podiatrists with no mention of psychologists.
“However, for those of us treating patients in the hospital, the mounting evidence at the time was that the lungs were healing, the heart was healing, but the brain was not.”
He said he was surprised to see that Mater’s infectious diseases department had not been included as a site for follow-up, despite the fact that most of the scientific data on the subject was generated in Ireland and he suspected that he was seeing more patients with long-term Covid then operated any other site in Ireland .
He requested a meeting with the national clinical leader of the HSE to discuss the findings of his investigation in April, but it was past Friday before he received a phone call – ahead of his appearance before the committee – requesting a meeting in the coming weeks.
Prof Lambert said he proposes that the Mater be the neurorehabilitation center with a national network to support GPs as there are so many patients across the country with long-term Covid and many are unable to travel because they are so sick.
He said it would focus on brain rehabilitation as patients with long-term Covid behave very much like patients who have had closed head injuries.
The team would consist of neurologists, psychologists and psychiatrists, as well as neurophysiotherapists.
He said his team will help rewrite guidelines in the HSE’s long Covid treatment plan.
He knows patients who have been discharged from post-Covid clinics because nothing is found wrong with them.
Some have “jumped from one specialist to another and many thousands of dollars worth of tests have been carried out.”
He said: “I was recently contacted by a psychiatric nurse who has had Covid for a year and has an overwhelming fear of not being able to go to work.
“She has been privately referred to a psychiatrist with the first appointment available in February 2023,” he said.
Patients are prescribed drugs by GPs who do not have a good referral route with painkillers, nerve blockers or addictive pills, he added.