Fibrotic-like abnormalities notably prevalent one year after hospitalization with COVID-19

Background: We investigated whether COVID-19 leads to persistent impaired pulmonary function, fibrotic -like abnormalities or psychological symptoms 12 months after discharge and whether severely ill patients (ICU admission) recover differently than moderately ill patients.Methods: This single-centre cohort study followed adult COVID-19 survivors for a period of one year after dis-charge. Patients underwent pulmonary function tests 6 weeks, 3 months and 12 months after discharge and were psychologically evaluated at 6 weeks and 12 months. Computed tomography (CT) was performed after 3 months and 12 months.Results: 66 patients were analysed, their median age was 60.5 (IQR: 54-69) years, 46 (70%) patients were male. 38 (58%) patients had moderate disease and 28 (42%) patients had severe disease. Most patients had spirometric values within normal range after 12 months of follow-up. 12 (23%) patients still had an impaired lung diffusion after 12 months. Impaired pulmonary diffusion capacity was associated with residual CT abnormalities (OR 5.1,CI-95: 1.2-22.2), shortness of breath (OR 7.0, CI-95: 1.6-29.7) and with functional lim-itations (OR 5.8, CI-95: 1.4-23.8). Ground-glass opacities resolved in most patients during follow-up. Resorp-tion of reticulation, bronchiectasis and curvilinear bands was rare and independent of disease severity. 81% of severely ill patients and 37% of moderately ill patients showed residual abnormalities after 12 months (OR 8.1, CI-95: 2.5-26.4). A minority of patients had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depres-sion and cognitive failure during follow-up.Conclusion: Some patients still had impaired lung diffusion 12 months after discharge and fibrotic-like resid-ual abnormalities were notably prevalent, especially in severely ill patients. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Immunogenetics and cellular immunology of bacterial infectious disease