News from Germany

For children and adolescents with Long-COVID: MHH builds up care center​

As part of a nationwide network, the Comprehensive Care Center is intended to contribute to better diagnostics and treatment in Lower Saxony.


Long COVID remains an issue even years after the pandemic. Copyright: pixabay, Karin Kaiser/MHH

At the CCC, experts get to the bottom of complaints. Copyright: Canva
Many questions about Long COVID are still unanswered. For example, the exact cause of the disease has not yet been fully researched. This makes it difficult to diagnose and treat those affected. In order to improve the care situation, especially for children and adolescents, specialized facilities, so-called Comprehensive Care Centers (CCC), are currently being set up in all federal states. One of the 20 CCCs is being set up at the Children's Hospital of Hannover Medical School (MHH). "The CCCs are designed to be interdisciplinary and multi-professional. Together with scientific and clinical partners, we are establishing regional treatment structures for the state of Lower Saxony," explains PD Dr. Martin Wetzke. He is a senior physician in the Department of Pediatric Pneumology and Allergology and heads the CCC at the MHH.

Extensive experience with the patient group​

Dr. Wetzke and his team can draw on valuable experience when setting up the care center at the MHH. In the late phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a long-term/post-COVID outpatient clinic for children and adolescents, in which a total of around 200 patients were examined and treated. These included not only patients with long-COVID, but also with symptoms following a COVID vaccination or with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) of unknown cause. ME/CFS describes a severe state of fatigue that can occur after various viral infections. "COVID disease may or may not be the cause. A long-COVID diagnosis is often a diagnosis of exclusion," says Dr. Wetzke. This fact describes a core task of the CCC: to examine those affected with their various symptoms and make a diagnosis that is as reliable as possible. “A reliable diagnosis is always the prerequisite for successful treatment,” says Dr. Wetzke.

Numerous specialists involved​

The structures of the CCC should be in place in a few weeks. The first patients can then be admitted. It is also envisaged that the CCC specialists will visit particularly severely affected children and adolescents at home and offer the families support in their everyday lives. In order to provide low-threshold care to as many patients as possible, the CCC cooperates with regional specialist outpatient clinics and wards as well as trained pediatricians and GP practices to provide basic care. Psychological and psychiatric, social and palliative medical specialists as well as experts in rehabilitative medicine are also on board.
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Medizinische Hochschule Hannover : For children and adolescents with Long-COVID: MHH builds up care center

www.mhh.de www.mhh.de
 
Yann04 said:
Apparently the German Chancellor Merz did an interview and when asked about ME/CFS and long COVID started babbling on about the “psychological consequences of the pandemic”
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Here is the video of this:

And here's a chatgpt translation of the subtitles (can't vouch for how good it is):

Reporter: "Okay, let’s switch over to the topic of health. We’ve been getting quite a lot of questions about Long Covid and ME/CFS. Fabian sent an e‑mail asking: When will your campaign promise to support the many people affected by ME/CFS finally be fulfilled?"

Merz: "Yes—just last week we set up a parliamentary inquiry commission that will look into how we handled Covid and Long Covid. By now I personally know several cases. I have to admit, I underestimated this myself: the extent of the long‑term consequences and the psychological consequences that have arisen—also among school‑children. A great deal happened there that we did not monitor closely enough. We have to be prepared should something like this happen again; none of us can rule that out. So we will now address this thoroughly. It’s late, but it’s coming."
 
petrichor said:
By now I personally know several cases. I have to admit, I underestimated this myself: the extent of the long‑term consequences and the psychological consequences that have arisen—also among school‑children.
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To my native (and hopeful) ears it sounds a bit like he's making a distinction "...the extent of the consequences - also psychological consequences - also among school-children..." to include psychological consequences in his term consequences, but not saying Long COVID is psychological. I might be too hopeful.
 
petrichor said:
Reporter: "Okay, let’s switch over to the topic of health. We’ve been getting quite a lot of questions about Long Covid and ME/CFS. Fabian sent an e‑mail asking: When will your campaign promise to support the many people affected by ME/CFS finally be fulfilled?"

Merz: "Yes—just last week we set up a parliamentary inquiry commission that will look into how we handled Covid and Long Covid. By now I personally know several cases. I have to admit, I underestimated this myself: the extent of the long‑term consequences and the psychological consequences that have arisen—also among school‑children. A great deal happened there that we did not monitor closely enough. We have to be prepared should something like this happen again; none of us can rule that out. So we will now address this thoroughly. It’s late, but it’s coming."
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Wow, that's close to the worst reply he could have come up with. Misunderstands the issue, mixes up unrelated problems, talks about it as some future problem, only significant if another pandemic comes along, and clearly has no intention of doing anything about it. All because the medical profession refuses to even acknowledge it. No doubt he is told again and again not to bother with it by medical experts.

I never want to hear about science being self-correcting. It isn't, not by a long shot. In fact, scientists literally refuse to be corrected most of the time, would rather be wrong and in charge than follow people who get it right.
 
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