Montreal’s EPIC Center testing rehabilitation program for long COVID patients

Drawing on its long experience with patients suffering from cardiac problems, the EPIC Center of the Montreal Heart Institute has developed a personalized cardiovascular rehabilitation program that has allowed certain patients with long COVID to improve their quality of life.

After eight weeks, some participants in the program were able to improve their cardiorespiratory capacity (the body’s ability to transport and use oxygen) and ventilatory efficiency (the quantity of air necessary to provide an effort).

Some also noted a reduction in the impact of long COVID symptoms on their daily life.

“We have had experience for decades with cardiovascular rehabilitation, particularly with people who sometimes have severe heart disease, but who are (eligible) for rehabilitation,” said Florent Besnier, the postdoctoral researcher leading the study.

“And in people who have this long COVID, there are symptoms that remind us of our patients that we are used to seeing, so muscle wasting, fatigue, problems making efforts in their day-to-day lives… We thought maybe we could help them.”

Besnier adds patients suffering from heart problems and those with long COVID have in common that they become excessively sedentary and physically inactive, which contributes to their deconditioning.

Intrigued by these similarities between the two patient populations, Besnier and his colleagues recruited and randomly divided into two groups 40 participants with an average age of 53 years.

The first group followed an individualized clinical rehabilitation program at the EPIC Center for eight weeks. The program included three weekly sessions of aerobic and resistance exercises as well as daily inspiratory muscle training. The second group maintained their daily habits, without additional intervention for the same period.

“In the interventional group, we could observe a significant improvement, statistically and clinically, in cardiorespiratory capacity of approximately 13 per cent,” said Besnier. “We also saw a significant improvement in ventilatory efficiency. If I simplify a little, the patients are a little less out of breath for the same level of effort as before the study.”

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The researchers also measured a significant improvement in “functional parameters” such as the ability to walk, stand up or sit down. “We are talking about the impact of the symptoms, not their severity. The impact of symptoms on family, personal or professional life had diminished,” said Besnier.

A third of the members of the intervention group did not benefit from any improvement. All these results, whether positive or negative, are comparable to those obtained during an intervention with cardiac patients.

Those responsible for the study remind that it was a small study with only 40 participants. It is therefore not possible to “generalize” the results obtained to all patients with long COVID, said Besnier, even if this represents for them a glimmer of hope by demonstrating that it is probably possible to improve their situation if they are offered the right rehabilitation program.

“We must now evaluate the long-term impact of the rehabilitation program, but I remain optimistic,” said Besnier, who pointed to a study recently published by the medical journal BMJ that showed improvements were still present one year after the intervention.

The findings of this study were published by the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

–This report by la Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews