The Indraprastha Apollo Hospital on October 20 opened a recovery clinic for patients suffering from post-COVID complications. The hospital said that the clinic will have a dedicated team to cater to the patients coming with illnesses exhibited after recovery from coronavirus.

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"The Post-COVID Recovery Clinics will be manned by a team of specialists, including neurologists and immunologists to help patients deal with the aftermath of COVID-19 and restore them to health," said the Managing Director of the hospital. He said that the decision to set-up the post-COVID recovery clinic was taken after witnessing the rising number of patients who have recovered from COVID, but were suffering from the mid and long term persistent effects of the infection.

Dr. Rajesh Chawla, senior consultant, internal medicine department at the hospital, said over 50 percent of patients who recovered from the COVID-19 disease returned to the hospital with complaints of multiple complications. "Over 50 percent of our patients came back to us with problems, including breathlessness, chest pain and heart issues, joint pains, vision problems, and memory loss months after recovering from the COVID-19." he added.

Besides, the dearth of clinics to deal with post-COVID trauma in the national capital, prompted the hospital management to set-up a dedicated facility for such patients. "Many patients, who have recovered from COVID-19 in our hospital, have been contacting us for symptoms that they are having, and not knowing where to go for them. To address these health issues faced by the patients who have recovered from COVID-19, we have started the post-COVID recovery clinic, said the Managing Director.

Dr. Chawla said there was an urgent need to focus on the patients suffering from post-COVID trauma as its impact could be extremely fatal for people already suffering with non-communicable diseases (NCD). "Before COVID-19, we were already facing a tsunami of NCDs that were responsible for over 70 percent of the deaths. The post-COVID syndrome is adding to this disease load, and if not addressed with a special focus will lead to an increase in morbidity and mortality beyond the pandemic with a large number of chronically ill individuals who have recovered from COVID. The specialised clinics will prevent acute components of the post-COVID syndrome from progressing further and effectively manage the chronic situations," he said.

As per the reports, COVID-19 is seen to impact almost all the vital organs in the body. Apart from acute events like stroke and myocardial infarction, chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension are also seen in the post-COVID syndrome. However, a number of sudden deaths in post-COVID patients have been reported and most of these are attributed to acute cardiac events. Meanwhile, the hospital also informed that the Apollo group will open such post-COVID recovery clinics at its branches across the country. Three have already been set-up, including Delhi while nine others are in the pipeline, the Managing Director added.