Post Covid-19 Syndrome: A Cross Sectional Study in Baghdad

Abstract

Many patients are being released from hospitals without follow up and thorough assessment oftheir recovery.Iraq is one of the countries that were hit hard by this novel disease, but till now thereis little literature on the sequelae of this illness after recovery. The aim of our study is to assess theprevalence of post covid 19 syndrome and the characteristics of post covid 19 symptoms. A crosssectional study using interview based questionnaires of 165 recovered covid 19 subjects (mean age37±14)and 67% of them were female. The prevalence of post covid 19 in the study sample was(66.7%), out of them (52.7%) reported acute post covid 19 symptoms, (18.2%) reported long postcovid symptoms, and (29.1%) reported persistent post covid 19 symptoms. The most frequentlyreported symptom was fatigue (29%) followed by hair loss (23%) and anosmia/ parosmia (21.2%).All of the patients who were in critical condition during the illness developed post covid 19syndrome. So a prolonged follow up of the recovered patients seems necessary, regardless of theirinitial clinical presentation.