Special Outpatient Clinic for Patients with Neuropsychiatric Post-COVID-Symptoms

After recovering from COVID-19, neurological-psychiatric symptoms like headaches, concentration difficulties, depression, anxiety or sleep disturbances can persist or develop.

Long COVID refers to patients who continue to have (or sometimes develop new) symptoms four weeks after a COVID-19 infection. Symptoms that persist for 12 weeks or more after an infection are classed as Post-COVID-Syndrome. These often include neuro-psychiatric symptoms: cognitive difficulties, sometimes in combination with headaches or muscle tremors, depression, anxiety or sleep disorders.

A COVID infection can affect the brain both through the infection itself and through the inflammatory reaction (encephalitis) or processes that are triggered by it (encephalopathy).

An infection with the coronavirus can also result in neurological-psychiatric symptoms; if these last beyond the acute illness or only occur afterwards, they are referred to as post-COVID.© Pixabay_Pabliyo — An infection with the coronavirus can also result in neurological-psychiatric symptoms; if these last beyond the acute illness or only occur afterwards, they are referred to as post-COVID. © Pixabay_Pabliyo

An infection with the coronavirus can also result in neurological-psychiatric symptoms; if these last beyond the acute illness or only occur afterwards, they are referred to as post-COVID.
© Pixabay_Pabliyo

The focus of other outpatient clinics is often on pulmonary problems, i.e. treatment by lung specialists, or on inpatient rehabilitation. At the Max Planck Research Hospital, the focus is on neuropsychiatric outpatient treatment. Neurologists and psychiatrists use their knowledge from the outpatient clinic for inflammatory CNS diseases/MS outpatient clinic, from the sleep outpatient clinic and from psychiatry as a whole.

First of all, it is important to diagnose and differentially classify the symptoms and then provide symptomatic treatment based on the symptoms. Neuropsychology, MRI, cerebrospinal fluid analysis and neurophysiology are the main diagnostic tools available.