Coronavirus pandemics causes systemic and mainly pulmonary changes. We assessed the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in pandemic survivors and the general population. Papers indexed by MEDLINE/PubMed, The Cochrane, Embase, Lilacs, Scielo, Psycoinfo, and Pepsic databases were searched to April 2020, using GAD and Coronavirus (CoV) infection as keywords. Sixteen studies with 25,779 participants in eight countries were included. A 46% pooled prevalence of anxiety symptoms (95% CI 33.9–58.2%) was found with significant evidence of between-study heterogeneity (Q = 154953, I2 = 99.99%, p < 0.001). Age and sex were not found to be significant moderators for anxiety symptoms. Intervention programs for anxiety symptoms are highly recommended.

No abstract

Background and purpose The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of different physiotherapy protocols on heart rate variability (HRV) and hospital length of stay in older adults undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). Methods Randomized controlled trial with allocation and researcher blinding and intention‐to‐treat analysis. Forty‐eight patients undergoing CABG were randomly assigned to a control group (CG), early mobilization group (EMG), or virtual reality group (VRG). CG performed respiratory physiotherapy and metabolic exercises, the EMG performed cycle ergometer exercises and ambulation, and the VRG performed the same activities as the EMG, with the addition of two Nintendo Wii games during 3 postoperative days. The variables of heart rate variability on preoperative and fourth postoperative day, and time of discharge of hospital was analyzed. Results The VRG presented a shorter hospital length of stay (p = 0.03). The CG showed a decline in HRV from the preoperative period to fourth postoperative day on square root of the mean of the squared differences between successive RR intervals (33.18 ± 9.89–9.74 ± 6.88, p < 0.05), standard deviation of all RR intervals (25.48 ± 7.50–15.23 ± 11.27, p < 0.05), and dispersion of points perpendicular to identity line (28.26 ± 21.6–2.73 ± 1.31, p < 0.05). The EMG and VRG presented a higher cardiac autonomic modulation compared to the CG (p < 0.05), with improved parasympathetic activity. Conclusions Different protocols of physiotherapy intervention affected autonomic modulation of the heart rate and hospital length of stay in patients undergoing CABG.

Although several clinical manifestations of persistent long coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have been documented, their effects on the cardiovascular and autonomic nervous system over the long term remain unclear. Thus, we examined the presence of alterations in cardiac autonomic functioning in individuals with long-term manifestations. The study was conducted from October 2020 to May 2021, and an autonomic assessment was performed to collect heart rate data for the heart rate variability (HRV) analysis. The study participants were divided into the long COVID clinical group, the intragroup, which included patients who were hospitalized, and those who were not hospitalized and were symptomatic for different periods (≤3, &gt;3, ≤6, and &gt;6 months), with and without dyspnoea. The control group, the intergroup, comprised of COVID-free individuals. Our results demonstrated that the long COVID clinical group showed reduced HRV compared with the COVID-19-uninfected control group. Patients aged 23–59 years developed COVID symptoms within 30 days after infection, whose diagnosis was confirmed by serologic or reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (swab) tests, were included in the study. A total of 155 patients with long COVID [95 women (61.29%), mean age 43.88 ± 10.88 years and 60 men (38.71%), mean age 43.93 ± 10.11 years] and 94 controls [61 women (64.89%), mean age 40.83 ± 6.31 and 33 men (35.11%), mean age 40.69 ± 6.35 years] were included. The intragroup and intergroup comparisons revealed a reduction in global HRV, increased sympathetic modulation influence, and a decrease in parasympathetic modulation in long COVID. The intragroup showed normal sympathovagal balance, while the intergroup showed reduced sympathovagal balance. Our findings indicate that long COVID leads to sympathetic excitation influence and parasympathetic reduction. The excitation can increase the heart rate and blood pressure and predispose to cardiovascular complications. Short-term HRV analysis showed good reproducibility to verify the cardiac autonomic involvement.