Efficacy of epipharyngeal abrasive therapy for post-COVID-19

Abstract

Since the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) was reported as a pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China in December 2019, its infection has spread worldwide. In Japan, the first case was reported on January 16, 2020, and although the number of infected people has increased and decreased with the emergence of mutant strains and outbreaks since then, prevention, infection control measures, and treatment, including vaccines, are being established. On the other hand, some patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been reported to experience various sequelae, the pathogenesis of which remains unclear, and there is no established treatment for these sequelae. Recently, the usefulness of epipharyngeal abrasive therapy (EAT), a treatment method for chronic nasopharyngitis, has been reported for this sequela, and therapeutic intervention by otolaryngologists for the sequela has been attracting attention.

We performed EAT on patients post-COVID-19 or with long COVID and conducted a questionnaire survey on subjective symptoms. As a result, 79.6% of patients showed improvement in subjective symptoms before and after EAT, and 20.4% of patients showed improvement of more than 70% of symptoms, while only 4.1% of patients were completely cured.

Since no clear treatment for post-COVID-19 or long COVID-19 has been established yet, and people are still experiencing the effects of COVID-19 in their social life, EAT is a simple and safe method that can be performed during routine medical treatment. It may also be an option for the treatment of post-COVID conditions. However, few patients are completely cured, and we hope that novel, more effective treatment methods will be elucidated in the future.