Post-COVID Trends of Health-Related Quality of Life in Hospitalized Patients With COVID-19

BACKGROUND: Standardized questionnaires make it possible to track changes in patients’ health-related quality of life after COVID-19 and to identify long-term consequences of the disease. AIM: The work aimed to evaluate the trends of physical and mental health in patients after hospitalization for COVID-19-associated pneumonia based on health-related quality indices. METHODS: It was a cohort study with two-staged survey (2022 and 2024) using the international VR-12 questionnaire. The study included patients hospitalized at the Bashkir State Medical University Clinic (Ufa) in 2020 for moderate-to-severe COVID-19-associated pneumonia. Based on VR-12 responses, physical and mental component summary scores were calculated. Changes over time were assessed using the Wilcoxon test. Factors influencing index values at each study stage were identified using linear regression models. RESULTS: The study included 134 patients who completed the VR-12 questionnaire. Between stage I and stage II, no statistically significant change was observed in the physical component summary score, which was 75 points [54.17; 91.67] (p=0.800). In contrast, a statistically significant decline was found in the mental component summary score at stage II compared with stage I, i.e. 68.33 [52.5; 79.17] vs. 75.83 [59.17; 85.83] points, respectively (p 0.001). Regression analysis demonstrated that the percentage of lung involvement at the time of hospitalization in 2020 for COVID-19-associated pneumonia significantly reduced patients’ self-assessed mental health in 2022 (p=0.045). By 2024, this effect persisted but was attenuated (p=0.072). Importantly, lung involvement had no effect on physical health indicators either 2 or 4 years after hospitalization for COVID-19. CONCLUSION: The evaluation of health-related quality of life trends in patients after COVID-19-associated pneumonia showed that the consequences of moderate-to-severe disease persist for at least four years, manifested by a sustained reduction in self-reported mental health.