Authors (including presenting author) :
Wong SN(1), Lai KPL(1), Chan PF(1)
Affiliation :
(1) Department of Family Medicine and Primary Health Care, Kowloon East Cluster (KEC), Hospital Authority, Hong Kong
Introduction :
Some patients including those who had initial mild or symptomatic acute COVID-19 infection can experience long-term physical and neuropsychiatric effects from their infection, known as post-COVID conditions. Therefore, a pilot post COVID-19 clinic was set up in a General Out-patient Clinic (GOPC) in KEC in October 2022 to provide clinical assessment and management of adult patients who presented to GOPCs with symptoms and signs that developed during or after COVID-19 infection which continued for more than 3 months and were not explained by an alternative diagnosis, and had an impact on everyday functioning.
Objectives :
To review the demographic characteristics, vaccination status and symptoms of patients referred to a post COVID-19 clinic.
Methodology :
All patients who attended the post COVID-19 clinic from October 2022 to December 2022 were included in the review. Relevant clinical data were retrieved from Clinical Management System for analysis.
Result & Outcome :
Results:
18 patients were referred to the post COVID-19 clinic during the review period, with a mean age of 65.1 years old and 55.6% (N=10) were female. 66.7% (N=12) of patients had received ≤ 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccines at the time of COVID-19 infection. Only 16.7% (N=3) of the patients were prescribed with anti-viral treatment during the infection and 11.1% (N=2) were admitted to hospitals or community treatment facilities. One of the patient was complicated by pneumonia and none of the patients required critical care.
The most common post COVID-19 physical symptoms presented to our clinic were respiratory symptoms (61.1%, N=11), followed by poor memory (38.9%, N=7), fatigue (33.3%, N =6) and gastrointestinal symptoms (16.7%, N=3). Other less common presenting symptoms include headache, myalgia etc. Among those presented with respiratory symptoms (N=11), 63.6% (N=7) of them were arranged to have CXR, 2 patients were found to have fibrotic changes on CXR and 1 patient was found to have a suspected lung nodule; 36.4% (N=4) were arranged to have spirometry. For those presented with poor memory (N=7), 85.7 (N=6) had Abbreviated Mental test (AMT) or Hong Kong Montreal Cognitive Assessment (HK-MoCA) done and all scored above cut-off.
Conclusion:
Although most post COVID-19 symptoms will improve and resolve but some of the symptoms may persist and have significant impact on patients’ functioning and thus warrant further clinical evaluation and management. The setup of the post COVID-19 clinic could provide timely assessment, investigations and treatment for these patients.
