Hospital system opens ‘first of its kind’ center offering imaging to COVID survivors
Mount Sinai Health System, located in the heart of America’s COVID outbreak, has opened a “first of its kind” new center to treat patients who have recovered from the disease.
The New York-based, eight-hospital institution said May 13 that its Center for Post-COVID Care will harness advanced diagnostic tools and treatment from radiologists, cardiologists, and a host of other specialties. Their goals are both clinical and academic—wanting to address the host of complications that might come during recovery and document them for others to study.
Mount Sinai has already treated more than 8,000 patients diagnosed with the disease, according to an announcement.
“This center will provide a unique opportunity to follow this population and systematically evaluate the long-term impact of COVID-19,” Dennis Charney, MD, dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said in a statement. “We will rapidly translate the insights we gain through this research into better treatments for the wide spectrum of effects that SARS-CoV-2 has on the human body.”
In making its case for the new center, Sinai cited recent studies, suggesting that COVID patients are at risk of multiple complications, beyond just respiratory distress. These have included blood clots, cardiovascular complications and renal impairment, among others.
The new center, located at Mount Sinai-Union Square, is compiling a COVID-19 Registry, by collecting a host of information from participating patients. Other analyses have found that the virus has had differing effects on those varying ages, socioeconomic status or race, among other factors. Sinai plans to gather this data from each subject, along with their pulmonary symptoms, cognition, physical indicators, and antibodies.
The New York City institution also released a study on Thursday, exploring x-ray’s usefulness in assessing COVID patients in the emergency department.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.