Medical equipment is still strewn around the house of Rick Lucas, 62, who came home from the hospital nearly two years ago. He picks up a spirometer, a device that measures lung capacity, and takes a deep breath, though not as deep as he’d like. Still, he has come a long way for someone who spent more than three months on a ventilator because of COVID-19. “I’m almost normal now,” he says. “I was thrilled when I could walk to the mailbox.
Now we’re walking all over town.” Rick is one of the many patients who, in his quest to get better, found his way to a specialized clinic for those suffering from long COVID symptoms. Many big medical centers have established their own programs, and a crowd-sourced project counted more than 400 clinics nationwide. Even so, there’s no standard protocol for treatment, and experts are casting a wide net for cures, with very few ready for formal clinical trials. In the absence of proven treatments, clinicians are doing whatever they can to help their patients.
“People like myself are getting a little bit out over my skis, looking for things that I can try,” says Dr. Stephen Heyman, a pulmonologist who treats Lucas at the long COVID clinic at Ascension Saint Thomas in Nashville. It’s not clear just how many people have suffered from symptoms of long COVID. Estimates vary widely from study to study, often because the definition of long COVID itself varies.