Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 July 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Effects of Long Covid and Provision of Long Covid Care: Engagement with Dr. John Lambert

Dr. John Lambert:

No, I have not seen any data to that effect. However, as I mentioned in my opening statement, I took care of all of the first cases of Covid at the Mater hospital, because they all went to the Mater originally. Many of my consultants had what looked like very serious lung and heart damage and even abnormalities in the brain. Everything healed in the heart and lungs. I had non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs, referred up from Cork with ejection fractions of 40%, which is bad. It means heart failure. People aged around 65 or 70 have that. However, within two months, it went back to normal. Most of the pulmonary findings show that those abnormalities healed with time. I was totally off base in March 2020 thinking that the focus would be the heart and lungs. I am not saying that some patients do not still have heart and lung problems. However, that number is very small. We still need to kind of continue to follow these patients longitudinally to see what will happen long term.

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