Physiotherapy: Long Covid and Rehabilitation

What comes to your mind when you hear physiotherapy? 

Massage? Rehabilitation? Workout?

In accordance with the World Physiotherapy Day, let’s explore what physiotherapy is and the 2 themes highlighted this year - Long COVID and Rehabilitation.

What is Physiotherapy?

Physiotherapy, also known as physical therapy is treatment to promote, maintain or restore health. It may help to improve a patient’s mobility and well-being. This is conducted by physiotherapists to involve patients directly in their own care.

What methods are used in physiotherapy?

To find out the cause of discomfort/ injury and assist patient in their own care, physiotherapist will typically use a combination of methods below:

• Physical examination

• Diagnosis, prognosis

• Patient education

• Physical intervention

• Rehabilitation

• Disease prevention

• Health promotion

Benefits of Physiotherapy

Physical therapy can offer different benefits while empowering the patients to take control over their health condition. The most widely known benefit of physiotherapy is improved mobility and movements, especially for the elderly. This may also contribute to improved balance and prevent possible falls. Other than that, physiotherapy can help to manage pain, and in some cases, provide an alternative to surgery. Other benefits include assisting in the recovery from an injury, trauma, stroke or paralysis.

Long COVID

With Malaysia's daily COVID cases touching 20K recently, something that worries all of us as much is the high brought-in-dead (BID) rates which account for ⅓ of daily cases in Malaysia.

We all heard of COVID, but have you heard of Long COVID before? Long COVID can be preliminary defined as the presence of signs and symptoms that develop during or following an infection consistent with COVID-19 which continue for 12 weeks or more. It is referred to as acute COVID-19 until 4 weeks and ongoing COVID-19 from 4 to 12 weeks.

Long COVID is quite common, where 1 in 10 of all cases will exhibit symptoms for a period of 12 weeks or longer. It affects people, including those who are hospitalised, those recovered at home, even those who had mild or severe COVID-19 can develop Long COVID as well.

Long COVID is a multi-system disease, with over 200 listed symptoms which can occur in any combination and fluctuations.

The most common symptoms experienced by these patients after 6 months include extreme exhaustion (fatigue), post-exertional symptoms exacerbation (PESE), problems with memory and concentration (brain fog). 

Other common symptoms include:

• Shortness of breath

• Chest pain or tightness

• Insomnia

• Heart palpitations

• Dizziness

• Muscle or joint pain

• Depression and anxiety

• Tinnitus, earaches

• Feeling sick, diarrhea, stomach aches, loss of appetite

• High temperature, cough, headaches, sore throat, changes to sense of smell or taste

• Rashes

Role of Health Professionals in assisting Long COVID patients

Health professionals including doctors and physiotherapists will treat you according to the symptoms of your experience from Long COVID. Before starting treatment, they may first conduct tests to know the underlying cause of your symptoms such as breathlessness, chest pain and heart palpitations.

Long COVID Rehabilitation

Effective rehabilitation interventions to support self-management of symptoms include:

1. Activity pacing

• This allows patient to resume everyday activities conservatively at an appropriate pace so they do not overexert themselves

2. Heart rate monitoring

• This is done using a wearable device to monitor heart rate

• Accurately pace daily activities

• Monitor body’s responses to exertion

Last but not least, Happy World Physiotherapy Day!

At DOC2US a team of professional healthcare workers is ready to help COVID-19 patients (T&C applies). Find out more about DOC2US Home Care Plan at our website. 

If you have recovered from COVID previously, no matter Long COVID or not, feel free to participate in this survey.

Resources

Medical News Today. (2017). How can physical therapy help? Retrieved from

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/160645#what_to_expect_during_physical_therapy

World Physiotherapy. (2021). What is Long Covid? Retrieved from 

https://world.physio/toolkit/world-pt-day-2021-information-sheets-english

World Physiotherapy. (2021). Rehabilitation and Long Covid. 

https://world.physio/toolkit/world-pt-day-2021-information-sheets-english

A WORD FROM DOC2US

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Written by

Ms. Neo Wan Bin