Many patients experience muscle weakness after lying in a hospital bed for so long, said Dr. Dale Needham, a critical care physician at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a leader in the field of intensive care recovery. As a result, they can have trouble walking, climbing stairs or lifting objects.
Nerve damage or weakness can also whittle away muscle strength, Dr. Needham said. Neurological problems can cause other symptoms, too. Dr. Chen said that Mount Sinai’s post-Covid center has referred nearly 40 percent of patients to neurologists for issues like fatigue, confusion and mental fogginess.
“Some of it is very debilitating,” he said. “We have patients who come in and tell us: ‘I can’t concentrate on work. I’ve recovered, I don’t have any breathing problems, I don’t have chest pain, but I can’t get back to work because I can’t concentrate.’”
The center also refers some of these patients for psychological consults, Dr. Chen said.
“It’s really common for patients to have PTSD after going through this — nightmares, depression and anxiety because they’re having flashbacks and remembering what happened,” said Dr. Lauren Ferrante, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Yale School of Medicine who studies post-I.C.U. recovery outcomes.
Emotional issues may be heightened for Covid-19 patients because of their days spent hospitalized without visits from family and friends, experts say.
“This experience of being extremely sick and extremely alone really amplifies the trauma,” said Dr. Putrino, adding that many patients were contacting his program to ask for telemedicine psychology services. “They’re saying, ‘Listen, I’m not really myself and I need to speak with someone.’”
To describe the wide variety of recovery challenges, experts often use an umbrella term, coined about a decade ago: post-intensive care syndrome or PICS, which can include any of the physical, cognitive and emotional symptoms patients encounter.