Effect of COVID 19 Pandemic on the Neurology Department Hospitalization with Analysis of the Neurological Complications Secondary to COVID 19 and Vaccination Against COVID 19
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Objective: We investigated the effect of the pandemic on neurological hospitalizations and complications associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection or vaccinations.
Methods: We retrospectively analyzed data of patients hospitalized in our neurology division from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2022 as the opt-out study. We classified the neurological diseases into nine subgroups, evaluated changes of neurological disease characteristics, and analyzed patients hospitalized with the complications from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection or after the coronavirus disease 2019 vaccination over three eras based on the pandemic stages: (1) pre-pandemic, (2) during the pandemic but before vaccines, and (3) during the pandemic with vaccines.
Results: Overall, 1756 patients were included in the analyses. The patient characteristics significantly changed throughout the pandemic ( < 0.01). Although the number of autoimmune cases did not change throughout the pandemic ( = 0.53), that of psychological cases and that of unknown cases were significantly changed ( < 0.05, < 0.01). There were four infectious cases and 11 cases following vaccination from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2022. The 11 postvaccination cases involved 10 kinds of neurological diseases.
Conclusions: The neurological characteristics significantly changed throughout the pandemic and there were diverse neurological complications following vaccinations.