1. Introduction
dyspnea, fatigue, cognitive impairment, Breathlessness, breathlessness
SECONDARY
Edited by: Jannis Papathanasiou, Medical University Sofia, BulgariaReviewed by: Dorothea Tsekoura, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece; Maria Chiara Maccarone, University Hospital of Padua, ItalyThis article was submitted to Digital Public Health, a section of the journal Frontiers in Public HealthLong-post-coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) patients tend to claim residual symptomatology from various systems, most importantly the respiratory and central nervous systems. Breathlessness and brain fog are the main complaints. The pulmonary function pattern is consistent with restrictive defects, which, in most cases, are self-resolved, while the cognitive profile may be impaired. Rehabilitation is an ongoing field for holistic management of long-post-COVID-19 patients. Virtual reality (VR) applications may represent an innovative implementation of rehabilitation. We aimed to investigate the effect of exercise with and without the VR system and to assess further breathlessness and functional fitness indicators in long-post-COVID-19 patients with mild cognitive impairment after self-selected exercise duration using the VR system. Twenty long-post-COVID-19 patients were enrolled in our study (age: 53.9 ± 9.1 years, male: 80%, body mass index: 28.1 ± 3.1 kg/mDyspnea is characterized by a subjective experience of breathing discomfort that comprises qualitatively distinct sensations that vary in intensity while deriving from interactions among multiple physiological, psychological, social, and environmental factors and may induce secondary physiological and behavioral responses (Virtual reality (VR) applications represent a novel and efficient approach to rehabilitation (Information in the literature on the impact of VR exercise in long-post-COVID-19 patients and its impact on fitness indicators, dyspnea, and leg fatigue is insufficient (