Post-COVID-19 fatigue as a major health problem: a cross-sectional study from Missouri, USA, 2022, Khatib et al

Abstract
Background

Fatigue following acute viral illnesses is a major issue that complicates the clinical course of several epidemic and non-epidemic viral infections. There is a noticeably higher trend of patients with symptoms that persist after initial recovery from acute COVID-19. This study seeks to obtain more data about the prevalence of post-COVID-19 fatigue and the factors associated with higher fatigue frequency among patients who had COVID-19.

Methods
A single center cross-sectional study was performed between May 2021 and January 2022 at University Health, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. The Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS) was utilized to measure post-COVID-19 fatigue. Descriptive and comparative statistics were used to describe clinical and sociodemographic features of patients. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), the chi-square test, and Fisher’s exact test were used to examine the statistical association between the FAS score and other clinical and sociodemographic factors.

Results
One hundred and fifty-seven patients who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and diagnosed at University Health were enrolled in our study. Overall, 72% of patients (n = 113) were female. The mean ± standard deviation of the FAS score was 21.2 ± 9.0. The prevalence of post-COVID-19 fatigue among our studied sample was 43.3%. The findings of this study suggest that female patients have a significantly higher fatigue score compared with male patients (P < 0.05).

Conclusions
Post-COVID-19 fatigue is a major issue following the initial acute illness with COVID-19, with a prevalence of 43.3%. We recommend implementing standardized measures to screen for post-COVID-19 fatigue, especially among female patients.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11845-022-03011-z

 

It's precisely existing standards measures to "screen" for fatigue that are broken here. It's more in the form of a screen that pops out from beneath the floor yelling "get out! get out!" until you get the message. I honestly have no idea what they are expecting here, that this isn't done and other healthcare professionals simply need to be told? That it goes like this in their minds: "hey, think of doing this", and the healthcare professionals would be like: "oh, hey, I never thought of doing this thing that is already standard, I will be getting right in on this"?

Let's try the non-standard measures instead. Which need to be developed entirely. And need to replace the current broken measures, which are, somehow, rabidly important to preserve in their current form despite being the opposite of what works.

I'm actually curious about this. Are they really not aware of this? That what they're seeing is those standard measures, which amount to nothing, and thus are entirely useless? And the solution is simply to, I don't know, do it more intently? This is so bizarre, it's like several mutually exclusive realities exist at the same time. As if thinking that reality is this or that way is good enough, no need to check or anything like that, it's not like this profession requires some attention to detail or anything like that.