Milan, 19 June 2024 – 45% of Milanese (and Italians) who fell ill with Covid during one of the many waves of recent years are now experiencing long Covid syndrome. This is according to the data provided by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità. These are the symptoms: fatigue, chronic headaches, difficulty carrying out daily activities, but also cardiac and neurological problems. A situation that risks having a strong impact on the national healthcare system. Again according to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, in Italy, between 2021 and 2022, deaths linked to post-Covid there were 4,700, certainly an underestimated number. In the Milanese area a proportion indicates an expected around 350 deaths. Numbers that recall the need for one greater awareness of the topic, both local and population medicine.
For this reason, distance learning starts tomorrow, June 20, on the OMCeOMi platform (the Order of Doctors and Surgeons of Milan). “Epidemiology, clinic and management of Post Covid Syndrome”. “The phenomenon of the post Covid syndrome – explains Roberto Carlo Rossi, president of OMCeOMI – determines a significant socio-health impact on the National Health System. The affected people present, weeks after the end of theacute infection, various subacute and chronic clinical manifestations, often decidedly disabling and lasting over time, even several months with a significant impact not only on healthcare and management costs, but also on the person’s quality of life. The first available numbers demonstrate this, and many more will arrive to confirm it. Hence the need to realize a specific course, for adults and pediatrics, that can be of help in the recognition and treatment of this syndrome, above all by defining a path to initiate patients, who often say they feel little understood and helped. If to some extent thanks to vaccines and better knowledge we have managed to counteract the effects of ‘first’ Covid infection, today the challenge, if we want to call it that, is represented by the ability to best manage the effects of Long-Covid. Once again – continues Rossi – the Ambrosian OMCeO is leading the way on an issue that is passed over almost in silence but which affects many citizens (and many doctors, who have fallen ill on the front line) and who have not even recognized a exemption for pathology or tabulated a specific disability code”.
