Surviving COVID-19

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Anchor lead: People who’ve been hospitalized with severe COVID-19 may need special rehabilitation, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Getting out of the intensive care unit when you’ve been on a ventilator with severe COVID-19 disease is good news, yet most people will need some additional help to make the transition to home. Johns Hopkins rehabilitation expert Megan Hosey describes what survivors might expect.

Hosey: we’re finding that people need five to seven days after critical illness to really get rounded back up with their activities of daily living to go home. We’re thinking that in patients who survive COVID and the critical illness that can be associated with that will have post intensive care syndrome.  So changes in cognition, including deficits in attention, learning, memory, it might include mental health symptoms like anxiety, depression, PTSD.  :32

Hosey and colleagues at Johns Hopkins have developed an inpatient program to help COVID-19 survivors recover. I’m Elizabeth Tracey.