92-Year-Old Paralysed Pune Woman Recovers From COVID-19

PUNE: A 92-year-old woman from Pune has recovered from coronavirus infection despite having suffered a stroke seven months ago which left one side of her body paralysed and even affected her ability to recognise faces.

The woman and three other members of her family including her three-and-a-half-year-old great-grand daughter returned home from hospital on Monday, a news agency reported.

Dr Vijay Natrajan, CEO, Symbiosis Hospital told that constant monitoring, measures to keep secondary infections at bay, use of standard treatment protocol and extra precaution gave the desired results. "If somebody who is 92 and had a debilitating stroke, the possibility of getting pneumonia is high as their movement is restricted. To avoid pneumonia, we ensured that her sleeping position was changed every two hours," Natrajan was quoted saying.

"As per the procedure which is called 'awake proning', she was made to sleep on her abdomen and after two hours, the position was changed," he said. In the prone position, the person or patient lies flat with the chest down and the back up.

Awake proning as a treatment protocol "is picking up in a big way for the corona patients as it helps lung ventilation in a better way and improves oxygenation", said Dr Natrajan.

"We used to make her sleep on abdomen (prone), on her back (supine) and also on both right and left sides," he explained.

Normally, the sleeping position of COVID-19 patients is changed every six hours. But in the woman's case, it was brought down to two hours.

"Since she had had a stroke and one side of the body was paralysed, she could not move on her own, so there was a risk of bedsores which can lead to other infections," he said.

Despite the woman's age and her ailment, her innate immunity seemed to be good, he added.

"Our strategy was to prevent rather than treat any complication. She did not require any oxygen support and as far as the standard protocol is concerned, multivitamin tablets and normal symptomatic treatment was given," he said.

The woman's recovery shows that there is no need to panic if a senior citizen contracts coronavirus, he said.

The common assumption that the infection would always be lethal for a person above 60 should be discarded, he added.

The hospital is treating another woman COVID-19 patient who is 88-year-old and has diabetes and hypertension, he said.

"When she arrived, she was suffering from breathlessness and fever and was on four-litre oxygen. Today we moved her out of ICU and she is requiring only two-litre oxygen which is very minimal and it shows she is improving," Dr Natrajan said.(With inputs from PTI)

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