Post-COVID patient with long-term complaints recovers from calm rehabilitation
Someone who ends up in hospital with severe corona can recover miraculously quickly. But people who recover at home can continue to have complaints for much longer. Thanks to research by ZonMw and new insights from rehabilitation care, it is becoming increasingly clear what the right care is for whom.
A lot can change in a year. It is March 2020 when healthcare providers are still at their wits' end. The world is suddenly confronted with a persistent and dangerous virus about which very little is known. Hospitals, where the ICUs are becoming increasingly full, are calling on the rehabilitation sector to step in and take over corona patients.
Martijn Klem, director of Revalidatie Nederland, says that the rehabilitation centers acted quickly. `They immediately scaled down regular care. In many places, the outpatient clinics even closed. Only acute care continued as normal. Employees experienced stress and uncertainty. There was a lot of ignorance about the virus and there were not enough protective equipment yet. In addition, we were dealing with COVID patients who had been in intensive care for an average of three weeks. Then you are talking about very complex patients. No one knew what the right treatment was yet.
Research on COVID-19
Paulien Goossens, rehabilitation physician at Merem Medical Rehabilitation, says that some of Merem's regular rehabilitation patients had to make way for corona patients who were not properly weaned off oxygen after the ICU. This was done for safety reasons. With the knowledge we have now, she would decide differently. `We thought those new patients were still contagious. We now know that this is no longer the case three weeks after diagnosis. The patients we dealt with still had to cough badly and were physically completely unable to do anything. What was remarkable was how quickly most of them recovered.'
Goossens says that thanks in part to ZonMw, insight into the virus and its consequences has improved considerably, and with it the treatment of patients. ZonMw finances health research in general and, with the COVID-19 programme, Dutch corona research in particular. `Hats off to ZonMw for arranging this so quickly at the time. We now know much more about how to treat corona patients. As a result, the mortality rate has been significantly lower and the ICU stay has become considerably shorter than in the first wave. There is also more insight into which organs are affected. This knowledge is also important for rehabilitation.'
