Arq. Bras. Cardiol. 2023; 120(11): e20230750

Post-COVID Syndrome or Long COVID: A New Challenge for the Healthcare System

José Geraldo Mill , Jéssica Polese

DOI: 10.36660/abc.20230750

This Short Editorial is referred by the Research article "Long-term Health-Related Quality of Life and Outcomes after Hospitalization for COVID-19 in Brazil: Post-COVID Brazil 1 Study Protocol".

COVID-19 posed an unprecedented challenge to public health around the world. According to the ‘WHO Coronavirus (Covid-19) Dashboard’ (updated on 10/18/23), the disease affected 770 million people and caused 6.9 million deaths. In terms of the number of cases, Brazil occupies the 8 ^th position (38 million), rising to 2 ^nd in the number of deaths (more than 700 thousand) and, unfortunately, reaches 1 ^st in fatality rate with approximately 368 deaths/100 thousand inhabitants. These data indicate that if the pandemic was devastating for the world, it was even more drastic for the Brazilian population. The lethality of the disease worldwide was around 1%, and, also in this indicator, Brazil stands out negatively, with lethality close to 1.9%. As the disease affected a huge number of individuals, the number of survivors of the disease is also large.

Most individuals affected by SARS-CoV-2 fully recover after illness. An important portion, however, remains symptomatic for a variable period of time. The persistence of symptoms is more frequent and varied in more severe forms of the disease. In a cohort of 41 patients who required hospitalization for, on average, 9 days, 80% had reduced lung function 30 days after discharge, which persisted for up to 6 months in around 10% of patients, some of them with clear signs of restrictive pulmonary syndrome, limiting factor for physical effort. ^,

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