Treat patients for PTSD in rehabilitation, expert urges

MANY coronavirus patients could be released from intensive care units with post-traumatic stress disorder and serious mobility problems, a senior consultant has warned.

Carl Waldmann, the former dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, called for local clinics to be set up across the country to provide rehabilitation for those suffering from PTSD and conditions such as muscle wastage, as a result of prolonged periods on ventilators.

Dr Waldmann, a consultant in intensive care medicine and anaesthesia, is helping to draw up national advice on providing local rehabilitation services to all patients discharged from ICUs. It is due to be published by the faculty later this year.

He said that saving a patient’s life in an ICU without providing sufficient aftercare equated to “sending an astronaut into space” without thinking about “where they are going to land”.

While there are already rehabilitation services available after a patient has spent time in ICU for a heart attack or stroke, there is no universal scheme in place for coronavirus victims.

He said: “You have to think about how they are going to get back to normal, and their jobs. In many cases, they have a very rocky time in ICU.”

Dr Waldmann set up a “follow-up” clinic at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading in 1993, after finding that patients at the hospital’s ICU, which he ran, were ending up with “all sorts of problems, psychologically and clinically”, following their time in the unit.

He is writing national advice along with doctors from St Thomas’ Hospital in London, which is in the process of setting up an “exemplar service”.

“I think it’s something that other hospitals will want to take up,” he said.

“We suspect that we’ll see a large number of patients with muscle weakness problems and psychological problems such as PTSD.

“They may have some bad nightmares and psychological experiences that need to be dealt with.”