Browsing by Author "Huotari, Pinja"

Objective: Long-term associations of the COVID-19-disease with patients’ wellbeing are not currently well known, but so far evidence of prolonging somatic and mental symptoms after the acute phase have been reported. Patients that have been treated in the ICU or normal wards have been suggested to be in elevated risk for experiencing these symptoms. How prolonging symptoms affect patient’s quality of life has not yet been thoroughly studied. The aim of this study was to investigate how the symptoms reported in three-months follow-up were associated with the quality of life at six-months follow-up of patients treated in the ICU or normal wards and those who were sick at home in six-months follow-up. COVID-19 patients were also compared with healthy controls. Associations between the length of hospital stay and quality of life in ICU and ward patients were also investigated. Methods: The data of this study were collected during the first and second waves of COVID-19 in 2020. This study is a part of the RECOVID-20 project, which is a collaboration project of Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District and University of Helsinki. Altogether 241 subjects (54 % women, mean age 54.5) participated in this study (54 % women, mean age 54.5), and the subjects were recruited from four groups: ICU and ward group, patients who were sick at home and healthy controls. Somatic and mental symptoms at three-months of the acute phase were assessed with a telephone survey and a questionnaire was sent to the patients’ home. In the six-months follow-up the patients’ quality of life was assessed with RAND-36 survey that was sent home. The associations of prolonging COVID-19 symptoms with quality of life were analyzed using multivariate covariance analysis (MANCOVA) and further with discriminant analysis. The relationship between the length of hospital stay and quality of life was assessed with MANCOVA. Results and conclusions: The symptoms reported in the three-months follow-up were associated with lowered quality of life in the six-months follow-up. There were no significant differences in quality of life between the patient groups. The length of hospital stay was not associated with quality of life in ICU and ward groups. These results support previous studies that have found prolonging symptoms of COVID-19 to be associated with quality of life. According to this study, all patient groups can experience clinically significant prolonging symptoms of COVID-19 alike with later association with quality of life.