Long COVID Response to Classical Chinese Medicine.

Abstract

Background: Long COVID remains a significant burden for patients, clinicians, employers, and the U.S. healthcare system. Despite substantial resources and scientific studies directed at understanding and treating long COVID, its cause, and thus targeted treatment remains elusive. Conventional medicine focuses on symptom evaluation to rule out other etiologies. Intervention typically offers the patient current understanding and education and provides reassurance and context for their symptoms. Treatment is mostly supportive care directed at symptom management to improve quality of life, including occupational and physical therapy, breathing exercises, pulmonary rehabilitation, and mental health therapy. Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM) can help make sense of an individual's response to COVID-19 infection, as each pathophysiological change caused by COVID can be correlated with CCM principles, therefore a corresponding treatment approach is available.

Methods: A case series of four representative patients with long COVID treated with CCM is presented. Symptom complex, CCM diagnoses and treatment, and response to treatment are provided for each case, and the rationale for the selected therapy approach is explained.

Results: All four patients recovered fully from long COVID after treatment with CCM therapy. These cases are representative of 56 patients successfully treated thus far with CCM for long COVID.

Conclusion: There is no single treatment for long COVID in Western or Chinese medicine. Western medical treatment centers around reassurance and supportive care, whereas CCM treatment can be more directly targeted and individualized to underlying causes and increase the probability of recovery. These cases indicate the potential of CCM for treating long COVID. However, more research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach to long COVID recovery.