Neuropsychological features of severe hospitalized COVID-19 patients at clinical stability and clues for post-acute rehabilitation

Negrini, Francesco; Ferrario, Irene; Mazziotti, Daniele; Berchicci, Marzia; Bonazzi, Maurizio; de Sire, Alessandro; Negrini, Stefano; Zapparoli, Laura

Objective To report the cognitive features of severe COVID-19 patients entering in the post-acute phase, to understand whether COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome itself could result in long-term cognitive deficits and whether neuropsychological treatment after the acute stage might represent a specific rehabilitation need. Design Case series. Setting Rehabilitation hospital. Participants We assessed the general cognitive functioning, through tablet-supported video-call, in 9 of 12 consecutive patients admitted to the hospital at least 30 days earlier for acute respiratory distress syndrome due to COVID-19. None of these patients presented cognitive symptoms before the hospitalization. Main Outcome Measures General Cognitive functioning, measured using the Mini-Mental State Examination Test. Results A general cognitive decay was observed in three patients (33.3%), who had a pathological score at the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), with a specific decline in attention, memory, language and praxis abilities. The cognitive (mal)functioning seems to be linearly associated with the length of stay (in days) in the intensive care unit (ICU): the higher the number of days spent in the ICU, the lower the MMSE score (indicating a lower global cognitive functioning). Conclusions Our results indicate that some COVID-19 patients might also benefit from a neuropsychological rehabilitation, given their possible global cognitive decay. The link between the neuropsychological functioning and the length of stay in the ICU suggests that neurocognitive rehabilitative treatments should be directed explicitly towards patients who are treated in the ICU care, rather than towards every patient who suffered from acute respiratory distress syndrome due to COVID-19. However, given the limitation of a case series study, those hypotheses should be tested with future studies with larger samples and a longer follow-up.