Upon awakening, the long unconscious parenthesis leaves traces. For coronavirus patients discharged from intensive care, return to their home is not done directly, but must be preceded by a rehabilitation period of several weeks. These patients, after being intubated and ventilated, are indeed very weak.
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"When you spend three weeks in intensive care for pneumonia, you quite easily lose 10% of your muscle mass," confirms to Europe 1 doctor Daniel Habold of the Regional Health Agency of New Aquitaine. And so, he continues, "this can pose quite significant problems from the point of view of respiratory autonomy". According to this doctor, "this process of 15 days-three weeks in intensive care, then a good month behind in hospitalization, is the process of almost all those who have gone into intensive care".
"I have no more muscles"
Georges Betti, patient of Covid-19, saw his life saved by the resuscitation service of Ajaccio, and was therefore placed in an artificial coma for two weeks. Today, this 58-year-old man is slowly recovering in a rehabilitation center. "I have no more muscles, I lost 11 pounds," he testified at the microphone of Europe 1. Every morning, a physiotherapist comes to take care of him for three quarters of an hour. "She makes me ride a little bike, and work on the things that I miss, such as balance," explains Georges again.
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But beyond the physical state, patients sometimes have to face anxiety attacks, which come to undermine their morale. Questions, stress, worry, it is also a psychological after-effect that can appear after a long period in intensive care.