Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1368868
35 PATIENT SAFETY AND OUTCOMES COVID-19 fuels demand for lung, heart transplants By Mackenzie Bean T he U.S. transplant landscape has dramatically changed since surgeons at Chicago-based Northwestern Memorial Hospi- tal performed the nation's first known lung transplant on a COVID-19 patient in June 2020. Transplants involving COVID-19 patients are becoming increasingly common nationwide, with nearly two dozen hospitals having performed them, Kaiser Health News reported April 13. "You're seeing it move around the country, and it's moving around pretty quick," David Weill, MD, former director of Stanford (Calif.) University Medical Center's lung and heart-lung transplant program, who is now a healthcare consultant, told KHN. "It's like wildfire, where centers are saying, We did our first one, too.'" Nationwide, tens of thousands of people have developed severe, chronic lung disease aer getting COVID-19, according to Dr. Weill. It's unclear how many will need lung transplants, since COVID-19 is still such a novel disease. For some patients with irreversible organ damage — whether in the lungs or elsewhere — transplants may represent their last hope for survival. At least 54 lung transplants and four heart transplants involving patients with COVID-19 have been recorded through March 31, according to United Network for Organ Sharing data released April 12 and cited by KHN. is figure accounts for all transplants recorded since hospitals adopted new COVID-19-related codes in October 2020. Another 26 patients are currently on waiting lists for lung transplants, and one person is waiting for a heart transplant, according to the organ-sharing network's data. "I think this is just the beginning," Tae Song, MD, surgical direc- tor of the University of Chicago Medical Center's lung transplant program, told KHN. "I expect this to be a completely new category of transplant patients." n 33% of COVID-19 survivors later diagnosed with psychiatric issues, study finds By Erica Carbajal A mong 236,379 patients who had a confirmed COVID-19 infection, nearly 34 percent were diag- nosed with a neurological or psychological condi- tion within six months, according to research published April 6 in The Lancet Psychiatry. For the study, scientists analyzed EHR data from patients across 62 healthcare organizations, primarily in the U.S., and found 33.62 percent of those with COVID-19 were diagnosed with a neurological or psychiatric condition within six months. In 13 percent of those cases, it was the patient's first neurological or psychiatric diagnosis. The most common diagnosis was anxiety, occurring in 17.39 percent of patients. Neurological disorders, such as stroke and dementia, occurred in 2.10 percent and 0.67 percent of the study population, respectively. Overall, patients with severe COVID-19 were more likely to experience neurological and psychiatric outcomes com- pared to those with milder illness. For example, among pa- tients who required intensive care, stroke later occurred in 6.92 percent, and dementia in nearly 2 percent. Researchers also found that most of the neurological and mental health disorders included in the analysis were more common in patients with COVID-19 com- pared to those who had influenza or other respiratory tract infections. "Our results indicated that brain diseases and psychiat- ric disorders are more common after COVID-19 than af- ter flu or other respiratory infections, even when patients are matched for other risk factors," said Max Taquet, PhD, study co-author and psychiatry professor at the University of Oxford in the U.K. "The study cannot reveal the mech- anisms involved, but does point to the need for later re- search to identify these, with a view to preventing and treating them." n "I think this is just the beginning. I expect this to be a completely new category of transplant patients." - Tae Song, MD, surgical director, lung transplant program, University of Chicago Medical Center