A new study has found that putting a loved one into a coma as a result of a severe COVID-19 infection can be a terrifying, anxiety-provoking experience, but the patient’s chances of survival are higher than thought.
A joint research team from Cornell University, New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital found that 70 percent of patients who fall into a coma while hooked up to a ventilator due to severe Covid symptoms end up surviving the virus.
The findings demonstrate how low the Covid death rate was even at the start of the pandemic, before many of the treatments now available were discovered.
Experts also highlight the fact that these results should reduce anxiety among family members, because it seems that the moment when a miracle is necessary for survival actually has a much better chance than expected.
Researchers have found that a person placed in a coma and connected to a ventilator to treat COVID-19 has a 72% chance of eventually recovering, much higher than many people might expect. Pictured: Nurses tend to Covid patients in Apple Valley, California on March 11.
“It gives nurses and doctors the confidence to tell families, ‘Look, this could take weeks,'” Daiwai Olson, professor of neurology at the University of Texas at Austin, told the Boston Globe.
“We’ve had moms who wanted to stay by the bed and we can tell them to go home and take a shower, it can take a patient three weeks to regain consciousness.”
The researchers, who published their findings in the Annals of Neurology, collected data from 795 hospital patients in New York and Boston during the first two waves of the pandemic, from March to July 2020.
While doctors now have an arsenal of treatments, tools, and two years of experience to draw on to treat the virus, at the time of the study, the virus was still new and took the world by surprise.
Of the main group, 571 patients survived, or 72 percent.
The median recovery time was 30 days, although every single day requiring coma reduced the individual’s chance of survival slightly.
Some experts also hope that family members will face these findings when deciding whether to take a family member off life support.
Typically, a loved one doesn’t want someone to spend an extended period of time in a vegetative state and instead wants their body to be able to rest.
There is also the ultimate option of taking someone off life support, which can allow the family to begin the grieving process.
However, there is always a fear of making a call too early, and this study suggests that it makes sense.
“Main message [from this study] simple: if you give people enough time, most, but not all, people with severe COVID will eventually regain consciousness,” Dr. Brian Adlow, co-author and neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, told the Globe.
“We found that in the past, if patients came in with a history of cardiac arrest, people thought the prognosis was poor everywhere, but we learned that a longer wait [for them to wake up] is the right way,” said Dr. Jose Suarez of Johns Hopkins University.
This study was also conducted at the very beginning of the pandemic, when doctors knew less about the virus, how to treat it and how to act in specific situations for each patient.
A study published earlier this month by scientists at the University of Minnesota found that patients treated in specialized Covid-related facilities were more likely to survive than those treated in conventional hospitals.
Experts attributed these results to the experience a doctor gains over time by repeatedly treating patients with the same virus.
“Hospitals specializing in COVID-19 had many advantages, including providing high retreatment rates and isolating patients with infection,” the researchers write.
“This experience demonstrates improvements in in-hospital mortality in patients treated in referral hospitals due to improved care processes and supports the use of cohort building for future pandemics.”
Now that they have two years under their belts, as well as effective monoclonal antibodies and oral drugs, the likelihood of surviving in hospitals is probably even higher.