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United Kingdom

Almost Third of UK Covid Hospital Patients Readmitted Within Four Months (theguardian.com) 131

Nearly a third of people who have been in hospital suffering from Covid-19 are readmitted for further treatment within four months of being discharged, and one in eight of patients dies in the same period, doctors have found. From a report: The striking long-term impact of the disease has prompted doctors to call for ongoing tests and monitoring of former coronavirus patients to detect early signs of organ damage and other complications caused by the virus. While Covid is widely known to cause serious respiratory problems, the virus can also infect and damage other organs such as the heart, liver and kidneys. Researchers at University College London, the Office for National Statistics, and the University of Leicester, compared medical records of nearly 48,000 people who had had hospital treatment for Covid and had been discharged by 31 August 2020, with records from a matched control group of people in the general population.

The records were used to track rates of readmission, of deaths, and of diagnoses for a range of respiratory, heart, kidney, liver and metabolic diseases, such as diabetes. After an average follow-up time of 140 days, nearly a third of the Covid patients who had been discharged from hospital had been readmitted and about one in eight had died, rates considerably higher than seen in the control group. "This is a concern and we need to take it seriously," said Dr Amitava Banerjee, at the Institute of Health Informatics at University College London. "We show conclusively here that this is very far from a benign illness. We need to monitor post-Covid patients so we can pick up organ impairment early on."

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Almost Third of UK Covid Hospital Patients Readmitted Within Four Months

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    On the plus side, there might be some karma on its way to Boris "I shook hands with everybody" Johnson.
  • In other words, senior citizens are more likely to be admitted into hospital after serious infection.
    • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Friday April 02, 2021 @10:51PM (#61231202)

      Look at the professional [sbnation.com] athletes [yahoo.com].

      You know what, I'm pretty young, fit, and healthy. But I'm not as young, fit, and healthy as your average professional athlete.

      And if they can still be experiencing significant health issues months after infection then I do not want to catch COVID.

      • Sorry, but professional athlethes are rarely healthy at all.
        E.g. they may be thit but their leptin resistance is usually still through the roof.
        They also eat pretty unnatural for their sports career.
        And they take anything that will enhance their performance and won't show up even is much stricter tests.
        And the results only seem very healthy if you don't know that's artificial.

        After their career is over, you can watch them fall apart. It's brutal.

        • by Twinbee ( 767046 )

          After their career is over, you can watch them fall apart. It's brutal.

          In what ways?

        • They also eat pretty unnatural for their sports career.

          After their career is over, you can watch them fall apart. It's brutal.

          They eat unnatural because professional sports is hard on the body. They need all the protein they can get. They fall apart after their careers are over, in part because they eating habits they developed does not suit their suddenly sedentary lifestyle.

          In other cases, it seems CTE and other brain and mental damages are a big cause.

          But none of that is relevant to COVID19 and its after effects. Professional athletes are as healthy in ways that matters.

    • In other words, senior citizens are more likely to be admitted into hospital after serious infection.

      That would not explain why the readmission rates for Covid-19 were so much higher than the control group which, assuming they knew what they were doing, would have consisted of a sample of similarly aged and afflicted people who just did not have Covid-19.

      • by sinij ( 911942 )
        Having serious case of COVID is self-selecting for underlying medical conditions. That is, people that have more serious health conditions are more likely to be hospitalized with COVID and more likely to be hospitalized without COVID. If you only control for age, and not health issues, then you will reach wrong conclusions.
        • If you only control for age, and not health issues, then you will reach wrong conclusions.

          Indeed, that would be an example of doing your control group wrong hence I did not just say "similarly aged" but "similarly aged and afflicted".

  • Brits are "stout" (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by kenwd0elq ( 985465 )

    Britain has a fairly high rate of obesity, and obesity is a serious co-morbidity to COVID. The best things you can to to prevent COVID death is to LOSE WEIGHT and take LOTS of vitamin D. Several doctors have remarked that almost all of their COVID patients had low vitamin D levels.

    • Several doctors have remarked that almost all of their COVID patients had low vitamin D levels.

      And one doctor said that Hydroxychloroquine was a miracle cure for COVID-19. Perhaps we should look at studies and not just ask "several doctors". A quick random search on what the experts say shows that taking supplements (including vitamin D) to prevent COVID-19 infection is not supported by any clinical evidence [nps.org.au] or that the evidence is sparse, indirect, and inconclusive [bmj.com].

      By all means take vitamin D and lose weight, but don't stop social distancing, mask wearing, and washing your hands because you think th

    • by spth ( 5126797 )

      Several doctors have remarked that almost all of their COVID patients had low vitamin D levels.

      That might be correlation rather than cause: Human skin can produce Vitamin D when exposed to sunlight. So people working outside in the fields, such as farmers are likely to have higher Vitamin D levels than those sitting in an office all day. And those sitting in an office all day with coworkers has a much higher infection risk than being out in the field alone on your tractor.

  • For all I know it might be every 3.1th being readmitted anyway, and every 8.1th dying anyway too. Or every 300th, and every 800th dying.
    Both are significant.
    Without the values to compare them to, it's like saying "80%!!!" without saying OF WHAT.
    It's just blatant lying by omisson.
    That makes the likeliness of intentional fearmongering go from meh to *through the roof*.

    • by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Saturday April 03, 2021 @06:09AM (#61231928)

      The rates in the control group of hospital admission were 1/4 those of the measured group and the rate of death in the control group was 1/8 that of the measured group. The control group was exactly matched on things like age and sex. You can find this in the actual article from the BMJ [bmj.com] which, as ever is unfortunately not linked from the summary.

      Basically that means that in the year following infection, most of the death in COVID-19 hospital patients is still caused by COVID and we have been vastly underestimating the death rate from the disease. Which is a bit of a shock, even for someone who's been on the "this is a serious virus" side for the whole time TBH.

  • More than one study (Score:5, Interesting)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Saturday April 03, 2021 @07:51AM (#61232144)
    The Lancet [thelancet.com] has also released a recent study on the long term effects. After reading dozens medical journal articles during the last year, I had started to suspect the number of permanently disabled/life changing injury people would be around 3-5x the number of dead people. Mostly because of the clotting and tendency of covid to do massive cellular damage to the lungs, brain, kidneys, etc... which will never fully heal and restore complete function of those organs. What the above report shows is the number of people who have these issues, if you crunch the numbers a bit, is roughly on par with the number of dead. The other most surprising thing I learned from the above journal article is just how common permanent hair loss is from covid. By the time covid runs its course, there will likely be something like 750k-1m people in this category, and given the cost of care in the US could easily wind up exceeding a hundred billion dollars to treat over their lifetimes. So while it’s better than I originally suspected, and I’m sure many people here think that a million more people living with chronic medical conditions “is fine and isn’t serious” they are failing to see that it’s noticeable enough to actually drag the entire country down financially long term, has lowered the life expectancy, and is closer to polio than the flu for the long term damage it does to your body.
    • by kbahey ( 102895 )

      In addition to the Lancet article, there is this one in Nature Medicine [nature.com].

      One only has to read the abstract, and study Figures 1 and 2, as well as Box 1 to see the breadth of damage that this disease does to the human body.

      Here is the relevant part of the abstract, for convenience, with significant parts highlighted:

      As the population of patients recovering from COVID-19 grows, it is paramount to establish an understanding of the healthcare issues surrounding them. COVID-19 is now recognized as a multi-organ d

      • There were a lot of associated illnesses and diseases after the 1918 so-called "Spanish 'Flu" pandemic. People were still being treated in hospital for diseases which followed "Spanish 'Flu" well into the 1970s.

        I know of no argument being presented that this respiratory disease will be significantly different.

        • I know of no argument being presented that this respiratory disease will be significantly different.

          Well, just because you don’t know something does not mean that reflects reality [usc.edu]. A 60% greater risk of heart disease for those born during the 1918 pandemic pales in comparison to the million people who are afflicted with long term damage from covid.

          • A 60% chance of serious long-term consequences from the 1918 pandemic does not compare to this study's report of a 25% chance of serious long term consequences in the 2020 pandemic?

            Sorry, I just compared them. They're pretty similar rates. Of course, with a higher global population today (about 3.5~4.0 fold), there's reason to expect higher numbers over all, even with the same injury rates while the actual numbers are 30-odd fold down comparing the pandemics. Maybe those masks and travel restrictions have

            • You had to be a newborn for the 1918 flu, and it was 25% increased risk once they got over 60. So yes, only a tiny slice of the population was being born in 1918 and it’s far less damage not noticed for “60 years” according to that article while we have droves of people who are obviously injured of all ages right now.
              • You had to be a newborn for the 1918 flu,

                What?

                So, the 1918 flu didn't decimate (literally) young men on troop carriers? I think the record disagrees with you.

                And I didn't say that those people in the 1960s and 70s hadn't been known to be ill, and it to be related to the 1918 virus in the intervening decades. Most of them had been hospitalised for the intervening decades. Nobody knew what the disease was - still don't, to a significant degree - but that's a different thing to knowing that this class of pat

    • The interpretation in the Lancet paper seems to be that all the people with fatigue, muscle weakness, sleep difficulties, anxiety or depression can be ignored and only the people with more severe organ damage should be medicines focus! Way to ignore harm! Medicine has been doing this for decades, it has to stop.

      >Interpretation
      >At 6 months after acute infection, COVID-19 survivors were mainly
      >troubled with fatigue or muscle weakness, sleep difficulties, and
      >anxiety or depression. Patient

    • People pay good money, to treat hair loss?

      I thought that was just some shit people made up to trick money out of advertising agencies.

      Weird.

  • The NHS still waits for the 350 million per week that Boris had on his bus.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

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