Does this study take in account, that people who are hospitalized are probably less healthy than a control group, and maybe already have more cognitive deficits then a control group before getting hospitalized?
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Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
21–30 of 216 posts
Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "what's the effect of psychotrauma resulting from illness and hospitalization on cognitive function" Ventilators are extremely physically traumatic - those patients are considered to be the sickest in any hospital.
In which way are they physically traumatic? (Not doubting you, just curious and completely ignorant on how they're used)
The most intensive form of ventilation is so extremely unpleasant that patients are usually kept sedated for the whole thing.
An external pump shoves air into the lungs via a tube through the mouth and down the windpipe; there's a very small window of pressures where you can do this without physically damaging the lung. The tube itself is immensely uncomfortable and I imagine its mere presence would be traumatic enough even if your life were not at risk (for example, you can't speak because it sits against the vocal cords).
The muscles that normally cause you to breathe are completely inactivated chemically during ventilation, and this can cause them to atrophy.
There's a pretty good set of diagrams at https://eu.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/04/10/coronavirus... .
Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, I had a brief look over the paper but couldn't find anything to control for isolation since lockdown .. surely this would of had an effect on peoples cognition. On a side note, maybe it's just me but I keep seeing comments that don't follow a "politically" accepted view point, being down vote like yours.
Maybe it's because this whole situation has been ridiculously politicized, to the point where it's difficult to have a rational fact-based discussion.
...about anything. not just covid.
Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
#24Has the mechanism by which the virus affects smell been identified? Could this be related at all?
Mysterious neurological symptoms (some of which persist after recovery) are more concerning than the current mortality rate IMO. Great to see studies like this being done.
Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
#25From the conclusion: "The scale of the observed deficits was not insubstantial; the 0.57 SD global composite score reduction for the hospitalised with ventilator sub-group was equivalent to the average 10-year decline in global performance between the ages of 20 to 70 within this dataset. It was larger than the mean deficit of 512 people who indicated they had previously suffered a stroke (-0.40SDs) and the 1016 who…
> the hospitalised with ventilator sub-group So this affects almost nobody then, and is probably caused by the sedatives, immobilization and ventilator organ damage, aside from corona.
The error bars overlap with the "hospitalised without ventilation" group. There's probably something else going on, and the authors do call out the known cognitive effects of hypoxia.
Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
#26Much is still to be discovered about the virus, science only knows the effects after less than 1 year. The question is, what could long-term effects of this virus? (let's in 10-20 years)
true, yet the same can be said of:
- any new pharmaceutical - diets (keto, carnivore, etc) - 5g
etc
point being: modifying behavior due to decade time-horizon unknowns is not really pragmatic.
Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
#2713050 people report having had covid, but only 361 had had a positive test? How reliable is it that those without a test actually had covid? What if people with lower cognitive ability are more likely to falsely report having had it.
> Only a small proportion (0.76%) of participants reported having residual symptoms,
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems wrong to calculate that rate over all participants. Someone reporting not being ill can by definition not have residual symptoms. Correcting for that, the proportion with residual symptoms is 4.7%
Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
#28I would be nice if the HN link could reflect the wording found in the article's Abstract: "Case studies have revealed neurological problems in severely affected COVID-19 patients."
By adding "severely affected" to the context the authors set an important scope of analysis to their study.
Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
In which way are they physically traumatic? (Not doubting you, just curious and completely ignorant on how they're used)
The most intensive form of ventilation is so extremely unpleasant that patients are usually kept sedated for the whole thing. An external pump shoves air into the lungs via a tube through the mouth and down the windpipe; there's a very small window of pressures where you can do this without physically damaging the lung. The tube itself is immensely uncomfortable and I imagine its mere presence would be traumatic enou…
Furthermore most people, certainly before covid, who are so ill wouldn't even be considered for ICU respirator use because the recovery time from the trauma to keep them alive might exceed their likely life expectancy anyway. There is a worry that during covid more people are being referred for respiraton when previously they wouldn't be.
That was the issue, at least in the UK with the field hospitals as well. They couldn't handle patients with multidisciplinary issues and so were utterly pointless under generally applied ICU practices.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...
Re: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19
#30The study says "They (significant cognitive deficits) were of substantial effect size for people who had been hospitalised, but also for mild but biologically confirmed cases who reported no breathing difficulty."
So according to that study, it doesn't appear to be from ventilators if the effect is also seen in mild cases. Or am I reading it wrong?