At least one in 100 patients hospitalised with Covid-19 are likely to develop central nervous system complications, like strokes due to clogged arteries, bleeding in the brain, inflammation of the brain, and other potentially fatal complications, researchers have said after analysing nearly 40,000 cases of such hospitalised infected patients.
Many of the patients had comorbidities like hypertension, cardiac disease and diabetes, as per the study, one of the largest multi-institutional studies to date on brain complications of Covid-19.
Researchers from the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, US said the most common finding was a stroke due to clogged arteries.
Symptoms led doctors to suspect brain complications in about 11 per cent, the researchers reported at the recent annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
The most common complication was ischemic stroke, with an incidence of 6.2 per cent, followed by intracranial hemorrhage (3.72 per cent) and encephalitis (0.47 per cent), an inflammation of the brain.
"Much has been written about the overall pulmonary problems related to Covid-19, but we do not often talk about the other organs that can be affected," said study lead author Scott H. Faro, M.D., FASFNR, professor of radiology and neurology and director of the Division of Neuroradiology/Head & Neck Imaging at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
"Our study shows that central nervous system complications represent a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in this devastating pandemic."
The patients had been admitted between September 2019 and June 2020. Their average age was 66 years old, and there were twice as many men as women.
The most common cause of admission was confusion and altered mental status, followed by fever.
There were 442 acute neuroimaging findings that were most likely associated with the viral infection. The overall incidence of central nervous system complications in this large patient group was 1.2 per cent.