Pulmonary Function In Non-hospitalized Covid-19 Survivors

Non-hospitalized COVID-19 survivors may develop Long COVID with symptoms lasting beyond 4 weeks, but little is known about their pulmonary function. PURPOSE: Determine if COVID survivors who experienced more severe acute infection with persistent symptoms (PS) performed worse on tests of pulmonary function than those with lower severity and no PS. METHODS: 76 COVID survivors (54 females) were tested 2-23 mo (8.0 ± 4.6 mo) post infection and categorized into severity groups during acute illness: “Less severe” survivors reported 1-7 symptoms and “more severe” 8-16 symptoms. Participants were also categorized into recovery groups based on their self-reported state of health at the time of testing compared with their health prior to COVID infection (Yes = Recovered; No = PS). Four groups were compared with classic one-way or Welch’s ANOVA (p < 0.05): 1) less severe and recovered, 2) less severe and PS, 3) more severe and recovered, and 4) more severe and PS. Forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory volume (FEV1) were obtained from pulmonary function testing using the peak value of three reproducible efforts. RESULTS: Months since infection did not differ between groups (p = 0.411). More females were tested overall with more females represented in the more severe groups. FVC differed between at least two groups (F (3,31) = [3.53], p = 0.026): FVC was greater in the less severe and recovered group than the more severe and PS group (p = 0.033). FEV1 did not differ between any groups (F (3,71) = [1.57], p = 0.203). CONCLUSIONS: Non-hospitalized COVID survivors who experienced more severe acute infection and had persistent symptoms produced lower FVC values, however, this was not clinically significant because FVC % was >80% of predicted.