A recent report found that about 1% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are likely to experience a brain complication. The patients were scheduled to be admitted between September 2019 and June 2020.
The novel coronavirus is a respiratory disease with the ability to affect other vital organs in the body, such as the central nervous system.According to studies, COVID-19 patients who have had severe infections can experience severe inflammation, strokes, and seizures in the brain.Brain fog, headaches, dizziness, and blurred vision have been associated with it.To top it off, a recent report found that about 1% of hospitalized COVID patients are likely to experience a brain complication.
Researchers from the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, United States, analysed nearly 40,000 cases of hospitalized Covid-19 positive patients from seven US and four western European university hospitals.At the recent annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, doctors suspect brain abnormalities in about 11%.Ischemic stroke had the most common complication, with an incidence of 6.2%, followed by intracranial hemorrhage (3.72%) and encephalitis (0.47%), a brain inflammation.While much has been written about the Covid-19-related pulmonary complications, we often don't talk about the other organs affected, says study lead author Scott H. Faro, M.D., FASFNR, professor of radiology and neurology, and director of the Division of NeuroradiologyHead & Neck Imaging at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. The patients were scheduled to be admitted between September 2019 and June 2020.They had an average age of 66 years and were twice as many men as women.Confusion and altered mental status were the most common causes of admission, followed by fever.Most of the patients had comorbidities, such as hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes. In this large patient population, the total incidence of central nervous system problems was about 1.2%.A Faro said that out of all the patients who had imaging like an MRI or a CT scan of the brain, the exam was positive about 10% of the time.According to the prevalence of 1.2 percent, only about one out of every 100 patients admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 will have a brain injury of some kind.They also found a small number of unusual findings, such as acute disseminating encephalomyelitis, an inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, and the syndrome of posterior reversible encephalopathy, which mimics many of the symptoms of a stroke. For patients with Covid-19, there should ideally be a low threshold to order brain imaging.(With inputs from IANS).(With inputs from I