Frecuencia, perfil clínico y nivel cognitivo en estudiantes de medicina de la Universidad de Cuenca con síndrome COVID 19 post-agudo en el periodo marzo - agosto, 2022

Abstract

Background: Post-acute COVID 19 syndrome is caused by immune system alterations, which produces chronic inflammatory responses, whose symptoms persist for four weeks or more after being infected with SARS-CoV-2. General objective: To determine the frequency,

clinical profile and cognitive level in medicine students of the University of Cuenca with post- acute COVID 19 syndrome in the period March - August 2022. Methodology: This is a cross- sectional descriptive study. The universe comprised 112 University of Cuenca first-to-fifth

year medicine students in the March-August 2022 academic term, who were also infected with SARS-CoV-2. A form, prepared by the researchers, and the MoCA Test were applied. The SPSS Statistics V25 was used for statistical analysis of the results. Results: It was determined that 34.82% of the 112 students showed post-acute COVID 19 Syndrome, with a higher proportion of female cases (69.2%) .The most frequent symptom was fatigue with a percentage of 66.67%. Additionally, 7.7%of students showed cognitive alterations. Conclusions: Post-acute syndrome of COVID 19 syndrome was more frequent in women. The most common symptoms were fatigue, cough, headache and hyposmia. The frequency of alteration within the determination of the cognitive level was lower than that established in international references.