'"Together against Post-Covid" Initiative' (survey), University Hospital Tübingen (Germany), May 2021

At University Hospital Tübingen, Germany, a "group of scientists from various disciplines interested in questions regarding Post-Covid that are relevant to [clinical] practice ["praxisrelevant"]" has designed a set of surveys (one for patients, one for doctors and one for other health professionals) to collect "knowledge" about "which interventions (pharmaceutical, non-pharmaceutical, household remedy, naturopathic treatment, etc.) have helped you or your patients with various Post-Covid symptoms."
"The most promising approaches can be taken up by science and tested in clinical studies."

I've just taken the patient survey.
After asking when you had your first positive Covid test (within last four weeks, last three months, last six months, longer than six months; or: no positive Covid test at all), they then ask about main symptoms, giving only the following options:
- lack of stamina/rapid fatiguability ("so-called fatigue")
- dyspnoea
- difficulties concentrating
- psychological impairments (sadness, anxiety, testiness, sleep disturbance, other)
- loss of taste / smell
- headaches
- other (with open text field)

You can then describe up to five "therapeutical approaches" you have tried. Per approach, you are asked to state "for which symptoms" you tried this approach and how well it helped: very well, well, so-so, little, not at all.

Then there is an opportunity to state which therapeutical approach you would like to see for Post-Covid (or to state that "I don't miss approaches").

Lastly, there are questions about the disciplines/specialisms that have treated you for your Post-Covid Symptoms, sex, age and whether you are a health professional or not.

What a waste of resources and anyone's time. Highly distressing that this is how one of Germany's university hospitals tries to gather "knowledge" about "Post-Covid".

Even if we forget for a minute about the uselessness of the overall approach, it just boggles the mind that they limit their list of symptoms (or symptom complexes) to those six. Also, how would one rate the effectiveness of an "approach" if it helps avoiding PEM, but does not lead to raising one's activity ceiling? It just isn't possible to communicate anything useful about this through an effectiveness rating.

A contact email address is listed on the introductory page (AMCovid19@med.uni-tuebingen.de) - in case anyone is up to writing them a message.

Link to the survey:
https://www.medizin.uni-tuebingen.de/de/post-covid-19

 

Why are these psychological impairments? Anxiety perhaps, but the others? Sadness is a normal emotion, testiness is what I feel when I'm hungry, and sleep disturbance can be due to restless legs or many other physical causes. Surely a better list of psychological impairments would be anxiety, depression, paranoid schizophrenia etc. But testiness and sadness? Really. It's enough to make me testy and sad.