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A doctor, a nurse and a patient present their testimonies as affected people at the VIII Aragón-Occitania Medical Meeting, organized by the College of Physicians of Huesca at the Barbastro Hospital.
We are wounded in war. First we had to take care of the acutely ill, the dead, then the vaccines and now it is our turn to the war wounded. Covid has not killed us but it has left many dead and very sick”. In this graphic and heartbreaking way she exposed the Dr. María Pilar Pérez Polo, family doctor in Casetas, your case as a patient with persistent or prolonged covid in the VIII Aragon-Occitania Medical Meeting, organized this Saturday by the College of Physicians of Huesca at the Hospital de Barbastro. It addressed the consequences left by the coronavirus, its persistence with other diseases such as cancer, as well as analyzed the process of vaccination on both sides of the Pyrenees.
María Pilar Pérez meets two requirements for persistent covid: she is 43 years old, the average age of these patients, and she is a woman (80% of cases occur in women). This young doctor, who is part of the Long Covid association, He got infected working in the ER just yesterday a year ago. “I was very sick, I had dyspnea, a very significant tachycardia and a tremendous general malaise: I couldn't stand up and I stayed at home observing myself because I knew how the hospitals were. and I did not want to occupy a resource that, seeing how I have remained and how the acute illness passed, I would have needed".
With symptomatic treatment, there is a lack of a drug for persistent covid so calls for more research and a multidisciplinary care unit. “Until that investigation arrives, we needed multidisciplinary units in Aragon. The patient goes like a headless chicken from one place to another in an ordeal of specialties and as doctors we do not know where to direct and they feel neglected. We do not have well-defined protocols. It is a disease that was initially thought to be respiratory, but it is multisystemic. We're already late. We urgently need nutritionists, physical and neurocognitive rehabilitators, cardiologists, pulmonologists.... the family doctor who is the main figure who captures the patient and accompanies him in a chronic illness at ages when it should not occur.”
He also gave his testimony Zaragoza patient Fernando Herrero, who contracted COVID at 48 and had to be hospitalized one month in the high flow unit (before the ICU) at the Royo Villanova Hospital. “You are not aware of the severity of this disease because you are very stable. When I went home the ordeal began: I lost 11 kilos, I had no strength, I couldn't shower or get dressed. It took me more than two months to lead a slightly more normal life, although I cannot do physical exercise such as climbing a hill or running because I still have dyspnea and my cardiovascular parameters were going poorly, although I have been improving. I also sometimes have my head a little disoriented."He says.
Another healthcare, 55-year-old nurse María Picontó, from the Holy Grail health center in Huesca, became infected while assisting an elderly patient at her home. “It is a risky situation for primary care personnel because it is difficult to maintain protective measures in a home and the exposure time is prolonged and what happened to me could happen. His family members tested positive, so did his caregiver, and then I caught him in November."He says.
After a catarrhal process, the symptoms of covid arrived in the acute phase and now prolonged. “I'm still not recovered. I have had two major relapses due to a crisis of brutal weakness that did not even allow me to stand up.. All of this has gone on for months with a very slow evolution and a great variety of symptoms. “I have stopped doing many things at the family, social and work level because I have been very weak and I have not yet returned to work,” she details.
She has gone through these phases taking probiotics for her intestinal condition and they offered her antidepressants that she did not take "because I have not been depressed, although I have had emotional discomfort." For María Picantó, “rehabilitation” in these patients and greater clinical care are crucial “because non-hospitalized prolonged covid is in no man's land and an organized response from the system is needed.”.
In this regard, in response to the announcement on Friday in the Cortes of Aragon by the Minister of Health of the creation of a protocol in Primary Care to carry out medical monitoring of patients with consequences generated by this virus, The president of the College of Physicians of Huesca emphasizes that its implementation is urgent: “You don't have to wait many times for the authorities to create specific units. We doctors must consider whether to establish monographic consultations and move forward, whether the authority likes it or not. The administration is very rigid in its approaches and protocols, and many times we must be the doctors who say that a situation has arisen and a response must be given.”
And as has been highlighted José María Borrel, persistent covid is generating a series of very varied symptoms, to which we must add the impact it has had on different sectors of society to which attention should also be paid, not only medical. “The pain is non-specific, but everyone who has had it assures that it is not the same as before. On the other hand, those of us who have not suffered it are not the same as before.”, emphasizes the president of the Alto Aragonese doctors.
It is estimated that there are 20 million people affected in the West, 5 of them in Europe. In Spain there are 700.00 and in Aragon, 15.000. ANDIn the healthcare field, it is estimated that there are 11.000 professionals with these symptoms.
