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Since the initial report from Wuhan, China, of neurological symptoms occurring in 36.4% of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19), there have been efforts across the globe to identify the potential neurological manifestations of the disease. These efforts have ranged from global registries to multicentre and single centre case series, and were vital to improve our understanding of what clinicians may expect to see as COVID‐19 spread. Although case definitions of the various neurological symptoms and syndromes have been fairly uniform internationally, there is a great deal of heterogeneity with regards to case ascertainment. The chaotic nature of the COVID‐19 pandemic meant that patient recruitment was often opportunistic, with great differences between variables such as patient location and COVID‐19 severity. This is reflected in the wide variance in the reported prevalence of both neurological presentations in COVID‐19, ranging from 7% to 77.8%, and the breakdown of the type of neurological complaints. For example, the prevalence of headache has been reported to be as high as 41.1% or as low as 4.3%.

This MJA narrative review shares more.

Learning Outcomes

1. Explain key components of the narrative review
2. List main findings
3. Identify the clinical characteristics of neurological disorder when managing patients with COVID-19. 

Details

Author: Robb Wesselingh

Article Type: Narrative Review