Post-COVID anxiety and its associated factors in Egyptian patients

Abstract

Context Anxiety is one of the mood changes that occur postcoronavirus disease-2019 (post-COVID-19) and interfere with patients’ daily activity. After supposed clinical and radiological improvement to COVID-19, some still experience somatic complaints such as sensation of dyspnea. Aims Evaluating the relation between COVID-19 survivors and anxiety and to what extent this could affect their functional status. Settings and design Ain Shams University Hospital, survey study. Patients and methods The survey included 120 patients post-COVID-19 one month or more and free symptoms attending Ain Shams University Hospitals Chest Outpatient Clinic for follow-up, 45% of them were in the age group 35–55 years, 56.7% were females, 78.3% had high education, and 27.5% were smokers. All included study participants were subjected to computed tomography of chest, oxygen saturation, State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) Arabic version, and Modified Medical Research Council (MMRC) Dyspnea Scale. χ2-test (or Fisher’s exact test) was used to compare data between different groups. Logistic regression analysis was used to determine the correlation between the features of individuals and their degree of anxiety. Results The most annoying COVID-19 symptoms as reported by this study participants were body pains (32.5%). About 61.7% of participants had high-state anxiety and 51.7% had high-trait anxiety. The age group 20–34 years was significantly associated with higher frequency of moderate or high-state anxiety (P<0.05), male sex was significantly associated with lower frequency of moderate or high-state anxiety compared with females (P<0.05). Conclusions Age and sex were important association factors with the prevalence of anxiety in post-COVID-19 patients. Higher grades of dyspnea were associated with higher probability of development of moderate or severe post-COVID anxiety.