277 - COVID-19 and POTS—Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2021
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
POTS is a chronic syndrome marked by high blood pressure and dizziness that can be debilitating. It's often diagnosed after patients recover from viruses like strep or mono, and now doctors are seeing patients develop POTS-like symptoms after infection with COVID-19. Dr. Christina Kokorelis and patient Vanessa McMains talk with Stephanie Desmon about POTS and the long-term prognosis for patients suffering from symptoms long after recovering from COVID.
KEYWORDS: chronic disease; long-term symptoms; post-viral syndrome
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
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| 0:38.8 | at jh.edu. |
| 0:41.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:47.3 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith Rogers, the producer of Public Health On Call. |
| 0:51.2 | Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Dr. Christina Cocarellis and Vanessa McMaines about |
| 0:56.7 | POTS, a syndrome marked by high blood pressure and dizziness that can be disabling. The syndrome has |
| 1:03.3 | long been linked to viruses of all kinds, so it's no surprise that it's been seen as a long-haul |
| 1:08.7 | symptom in COVID-19 patients, but it is concerning. |
| 1:12.8 | We'll hear from a doctor and a patient today. Let's listen. Dr. Christina Cocarellas and Vanessa |
| 1:19.2 | Bigmans, thank you so much for joining me. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. |
| 1:24.2 | Today I'd like to talk to you about pots and COVID. So the first thing we need to do |
| 1:28.9 | is define POTS. So POTS is an acronym which stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. |
| 1:36.8 | And these are, you know, medical terms, which essentially mean it's a condition where there's symptoms |
| 1:42.3 | that are provoked in an upright vertical position |
| 1:45.2 | that improve when the patient returns to a horizontal or supine position. |
| 1:50.6 | I would say the most common symptoms we attribute to pots include fatigue, dizziness, lightheadedness, |
| 1:57.2 | nausea, headaches, and brain fog. |
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