Page 21 - Palliative Care, Trials and COVID-19 Tribulations: First-hand experience shared by the experts at ground zero

What are the Main Distressing Symptoms?

Figure 11: The main distressing symptoms from two studies done in the United Kingdom.

Two studies were done in the United Kingdom, looking at patients requiring palliative care.
They found that breathlessness is the primary symptom, with about 66 - 69% of patients
being breathless. The second most common symptom that you actually deal with is
agitation/restlessness (42 - 48%), followed by delirium (10 - 24%), cough (4 - 9%), and pain
21 - 22%).

Figure 12: The percentage of main distressing symptoms shown by patients with severe
COVID-19 in Selayang Hospital.

In Selayang Hospital, we have been caring for patients with severe COVID-19 as well and
our team has been trying to collect some data. The Figure 12 is some of the data that we have
from June 2021. We can see that symptom prevalence is about the same as in those studies
from the UK.