Whole-body hyperthermia as part of a multimodal treatment for patients with post-covid syndrome – a case series

Post-Covid syndrome (PCS) has been an ongoing challenge since the COVID-19 pandemic. Relatively little is known about the effect of whole-body hyperthermia (WBH) in the treatment of PCS. We retrospectively analyzed the data of patients with PCS who were treated as inpatients with a multimodal integrative therapy approach including WBH. The primary outcome comprised changes in Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue (FACIT-F) between T0 (at hospital admission) and T2 (four weeks after discharge), secondary outcomes were changes in Fatigue Impact Scale (FIS-D), Multidimensional Dyspnea Profile (MDP) and Covid-Associated Symptoms (CAS) between T0–T1 (at discharge) and T0–T2. FACIT-F yielded a significant increase (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.001) between T0 (19.1 ± 8.4) and T2 (29.9 ± 13.0) (primary outcome), indicating an improved health status. While FIS-D and CAS scores improved significantly between T0 and T2, dyspnea parameters improved only between T0 and T1. 63% of respondents identified WBH as an effective treatment. Study results provide preliminary evidence for potentially positive effects of WBH in the setting of this study, in which it is embedded in a multimodal therapy approach. The results should be substantiated by future RCTs to identify specific effects of individual therapy components.