The Impact of COVID-19 on Developing Neurologic Disorders

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges of treating a new virus is the lack of information about it. When little is known about a virus, patients affected by it, as well as their families, are left with uncertainty. In an article appearing in this issue of Neurology®, Dr. Frontera and her team aimed to determine how often patients hospitalized with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) developed new neurologic disorders.1 They then compared several key outcomes in treatment between patients who developed a new neurologic disorder due to COVID-19 and those who did not. These included discharges to home, ventilator use, length of hospital stay, and in-hospital deaths. These findings can help us understand which groups of people may be more likely to develop more severe disease after having COVID-19, as well as what their prognosis is likely to be.