Application of dry carbon dioxide baths and magnetotherapy in the treatment of patients during the post COVID period

Aim. To study the effect of dry carbon dioxide baths (DCB) and magnetotherapy (MT) on quality-oflife indicators, dyspnoea severity, psychological status and systemic inflammation in patients who had recovered from novel coronavirus infection (NCI).
Materials and methods. Patients with a history of NCI were divided into two groups. Group 1 (n = 20) received a course of DCB; Group 2 (n = 20) received a course of MT. A control group (n = 20) comprised relatively healthy individuals with no history of NCI (absence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 S-protein IgG at enrolment), matched by sex and age with the study groups. At baseline — all participants — and after treatment — patients in Groups 1 and 2 — completed questionnaires assessing quality of life, anxiety level and severity of respiratory symptoms (SF-36, HADS, mMRC, Borg scale). Blood plasma was collected to determine C-reactive protein (CRP) by ELISA (Cloud Clone Corp., Wuhan, Hubei, China).
Results. Post-COVID patients had lower quality-of-life scores and higher levels of anxiety, depression, dyspnoea and exercise intolerance than controls. Both DCB and MT improved quality-of-life scores and reduced anxiety, depression, dyspnoea and exercise-induced symptom burden in post-COVID patients compared with the control group. According to SF-36, mean total quality of life increased by 9.3% in Group 1 and by 4.55% in Group 2. On the HADS scale, anxiety fell by 16.3% and depression by 19.0% in Group 1; by 8.6% and 14.3%, respectively, in Group 2. In Group 1 the mMRC dyspnoea score decreased by 55%, and the Borg score by 50%; in Group 2 by 35% and 22.5%, respectively. DCB also significantly lowered CRP (p < 0.001) from 1.12 [0.42; 1.81] mg/mL before treatment to 0.91 [0.26; 1.57] mg/mL afterwards.
Conclusion. Dry carbon dioxide baths and magnetotherapy appear to be promising approaches for mitigating manifestations of post COVID syndrome, but their efficacy should be confirmed in larger studies.

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