Expert: Demand for long-haul COVID treatment increasing
Oct. 8—EAU CLAIRE — A director of a Mayo Clinic long-haul COVID-19 clinic says the already-high demand for long-haul COVID treatment is increasing as the Delta variant sweeps through the country.
"Unfortunately, it doesn't look like long-haul COVID is really going anywhere at this point," said Dr. Greg Vanichkachorn, medical director of Mayo Clinic's COVID-19 activity rehabilitation program, in a call with reporters Thursday. "Since last year we've seen hundreds of patients, and more and more demand for services around this condition."
People who struggle with symptoms weeks or months after they become ill with COVID-19 often refer to themselves as COVID "long-haulers." The condition has also been called "long COVID" or "post-COVID syndrome."
People report a wide range of symptoms, but the Wisconsin Department of Health Services says the most common are shortness of breath, chest pain, fatigue, brain fog, trouble sleeping, joint or muscle pain, headaches, pounding heart and a change in smell or taste.
Brain fog tends to be patients' most stressful symptom, Vanichkachorn said, because it involves trouble with word finding, short-term memory and multitasking: "It seems to be much more of a neurological condition than we initially anticipated."
Doctor: More seeking treatment for condition
Wisconsin doesn't formally track cases of long COVID, and the root of the symptoms can be difficult to pin down. The percentage of people who get COVID-19 and long-haul symptoms varies, Vanichkachorn said, but when Mayo Clinic surveyed the patients it treated, "our current estimate is anywhere from 10% to 30% of patients that come down with COVID will end up coming down with long-haul COVID."
Mayo Clinic offers both an activity rehabilitation program, for people having symptoms zero to three months after their initial infection, and a post-COVID care clinic for people with symptoms lasting longer than three months.
The rehabilitation program has treated 300 to 400 patients from around the country; the other clinic is "booked out quite a ways now with patients seeking care," Vanichkachorn said.
Eau Claire is not home to a clinic dedicated to long-haul COVID patients; Mayo Clinic's long-haul clinics are based in Rochester, and Prevea Health operates a similar clinic in Green Bay.
Eau Claire health care organizations said people with long-haul COVID should first meet with a primary care provider and specialists.
"Marshfield Medical Center-Eau Claire encourages those with post-COVID-19, non-acute medical concerns to make an appointment with a primary care provider to assess their individual medical concerns and develop a personalized plan of care, bringing other specialists and resources to the team as needed to ensure each patient's specific needs are met," said Bill Priest, chief administrative officer at Marshfield Medical Center-Eau Claire, in a statement.
Breakthrough and pediatric cases
Vanichkachorn said Mayo Clinic has also been seeing cases of long-haul COVID in children, whose symptoms tend to be similar to those reported by adults.
He's also seen a few cases of fully vaccinated people contracting COVID-19 and ending up with long-haul symptoms, but that is rare. It's too early to understand how vaccines may impact long COVID, but it's a good sign that fully vaccinated long-haulers seem to be few in number, Vanichkachorn said.
In the year and a half since the first cases of post-COVID syndrome appeared, experts are beginning to "scratch the surface" of the virus' impact on some peoples' bodies, Vanichkachorn said — but the area needs more research to develop specific treatments.
"The trouble with long-haul COVID is it's so very nebulous," he said. "There's no specific diagnostic criteria yet, an objective test we can do ... More and more patients are presenting for care, coming with a wide variety of symptoms. What we're finding, at this point, is it's really difficult to tell what can and cannot be related to long-haul COVID. The sky's the limit at this point."
