Trial Report Identifying Post-exertional Symptom Exacerbation in long covid patients - a service evaluation, 2024, Owen

Identifying Post-exertional Symptom Exacerbation in long covid patients - a service evaluation
ABSTRACT| VOLUME 123, SUPPLEMENT 1, E64-E65, JUNE 2024

• K. Owen
• Colwill E.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physio.2024.04.078



Purpose:

People living with long covid can experience post-exertional symptom exacerbation (PESE) in response to activity (Twomey et al., 2022).

PESE is ‘a disabling and often delayed exhaustion disproportionate to the effort made, often described as a crash’ (World Physiotherapy, 2021).

It is also referred to as post-exertional malaise (PEM) which is well documented in the myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) population (Ghali et al., 2020).

PESE and PEM have been used interchangeably, however recently PESE in long covid has included increased breathlessness or tachycardia alone, which would not usually be categorised as PEM (Twomey et al., 2022).

The World Health Organisation (WHO) (2022a) recommend that if PESE is present, rehabilitation requires modifications.

Therefore, correctly identifying PESE in long covid is vital so rehabilitation can be designed individually and avoid causing harm (Twomey et al., 2022).

At present, the DePaul Symptom Questionnaire Post Exertional Malaise (DSQ-PEM) is the tool recommended for identifying PEM in long covid populations (DeMars et al., 2022).

The DSQ-PEM is the gold standard for identifying PEM in ME/CFS, however it has not been validated in long covid (Roldán-Jiménez and Cuesta-Vargas, 2022).

The aim of this service evaluation is to review the use of the DSQ-PEM for identifying PESE in our long covid cohort.



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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physio.2024.04.078