One expert has revealed a “warning message” that they are seeing in patients who are experiencing long Covid.
Those working in the area thought they would see issues with people’s hearts and lungs, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Dr Jack Lambert, a consultant in Infectious diseases at the Matter Hospital, joined RTE’s Today with Claire Byrne to talk about the impact long Covid is having on many people across the country.
Read more: Stephen Donnelly seeks 'immediate' payment of Covid pandemic bonus to frontline healthcare workers
Those researching long Covid were noticing that most of the problems lay with other organs such as the brain, rather than the heart or lungs.
“When Covid first struck, the patients ending up in the hospital were getting lung disease, or heart disease but after they leave the hospital, the lungs all heal, the heart heals,” Lambert said.
“There seems to be some kind of a post-infectious inflation in the brain, like post-viral meningitis-type symptoms that are going on for, in some cases now, years and years.
“The thing that people are left with if they don't resolve their Covid infection is symptoms of fatigue, decreased concentration, pains, neurological issues, headaches, shortness of breath and then psychiatric problems too, depression.”
Through working alongside GPs and others in the field, a picture was pieced together on how long Covid was actually affecting people.
Questionnaires by GPs found that 18% of those with long Covid had depression a year after their initial infection, 13% had moderate to severe anxiety and 21% had PTSD.
However, a frightening statistic from the research was that 72% of these patients were coping with long Covid by increasing their alcohol intake.
Lambert described these figures as “scary” and said: “It’s just a warning message. We thought it was going to be heart and lungs."
Services that deal with these problems “need” to be established, according to Lambert.
He said: “We need to address those issues and it doesn't need to just be dealt with at these centres of excellence because people all over the country have been infected.
“We need to liaise with our GPs. We need to provide them with support, services and guidance on how to manage these patients so they don’t have to all traipse down to Dublin for the long Covid follow up.”
He has seen people have a number of different scans in other to diagnose some form of long Covid, without anything showing up. These people are then “not being offered any kind of support”.
“The support and therapy people need is neurorehabilitation. It’s not lung function that’s the problem. It’s the brain, they still have an inflamed brain.
“That is causing the concentration problems, the headaches, the energy problems, the sleep disturbances, the personality changes. We need psychiatric support, psychological support, all the counselling support as outlined by the data that came from my GP colleagues.
“These are people that weren’t previously depressed. These are people that weren’t previously anxious. There’s something going on there. We need to target that population.”
Get breaking news to your inbox by signing up to our newsletter.
