Mucormycosis mortality rate observed to reduce by 40 pc

Since, mucormycosis is a post-COVID complication, as the COVID-19 cases have declined recently, even the cases of black fungus have come down. The mucormycosis will follow the pandemic pattern two weeks later. Meanwhile, the government hospitals are getting nearly 100 to 150 mucormycosis cases, and only Madras Medical College (MMC) has around 400 cases who were infected by mucormycosis.

“Earlier, the mortality rate due to mucormycosis used to be around 50 to 60 per cent among diabetic patients, and who was under chemotherapy treatment. Also, people were unaware of black fungus and were quite difficult to identify patients with mucormycosis. However, the death rate has reduced drastically to 10 per cent in post-COVID complications. Generally, regular diabetic patients are resistant to treatment, but as far as post-COVID diabetes is considered it settles down with treatment easily, and even the sugar level can be controlled,” said Dr Muthuchitra, Prof and Head of the Department – ENT, Government Kilpauk Medical College Hospital.

The health experts said that as patients are aware of the mucormycosis symptoms, it has become easy for them to identify the patients. Also, the category of patients is different post- COVID, which resulted in less mortality rate.

“The mortality rate has come down drastically compared to pre COVID. As patients are coming in much earlier knowing about the symptoms, and the category of patients is also different because many people are getting only post-COVID diabetes due to high usage of steroids, which can be controlled. Meanwhile, pre-COVID people came from organ transplantation, high sugar level and etc, and now it is not aggressive as before,” said Dr Mohan Kameswaran, managing director of Madras ENT Research Foundation.