الفهرس 
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Abstract
By the end of 2019, the novel coronavirus was identified as the cause of a severe respiratory illness and was designated as Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).
On March 12, 2020, WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic.
According to National Health Institutes in 2023, the clinical presentation of COVID-19 can vary significantly and includes a range of symptoms but not all infected individuals will experience symptoms. Some individuals may remain asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, while others may develop severe or critical illness.
COVID-19 is generally considered a short-term illness, and most patients return to their usual health within 12-14 days. However, it has been reported that some patients continue to experience symptoms for weeks or even months after the acute infection, a condition referred to as ”long COVID” or ”chronic COVID.” Long COVID is defined as the persistence of symptoms for more than 3 months after recovery.
While respiratory symptoms are often prevalent in COVID-19 patients, an American study on 1500 previously infected COVID-19 patients found that over 50% experienced difficulty concentrating which was the fourth most commonly reported long-term symptom following COVID-19.
Similarly, another Chinese study on cognitive functions in post-COVID-19 patients found persistent impairment in sustained attention, which is the ability to attend to important information for as long as it remains relevant.
By the end of 2020, many hypotheses suggested that the coronavirus might affect cognitive abilities and lead to cognitive decline or deterioration, even in individuals with mild or long-lasting symptoms after the onset of the disease.
The aim of this study is to assess auditory cognitive abilities after COVID-19 and demonstrate the extent of COVID-19’s impact on auditory cognitive functions.
This study was conducted from March 2022 to October 2023 and included 80 participants. There were 40 individuals with a prior history of COVID-19 infection who formed the study group, and 40 individuals with good health and no history of virus infection as the control group. All participants in the study group were confirmed cases based on positive results from polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, with the majority (80%) were non-severe cases.
The most important findings of this study revealed that complaints of attention and memory deficits after recovering from COVID-19 were common. COVID-19 impacted auditory cognitive functions in the form of selective auditory attention, sustained attention, and memory deficits. The results also indicated that the P300 auditory event-related potential amplitude in the study group was lower than in the control group, suggesting deficits in attention in post-COVID-19 patients.
Furthermore, the cognitive deficits in post-COVID-19 patients persisted for up to two and a half years from the initial infection, demonstrating that a single COVID-19 infection may be sufficient to affect auditory cognitive abilities. However, repeated infections may have a cumulative effect on the deterioration of auditory memory.
Interestingly, there was no correlation between the severity of COVID-19 symptoms and the occurrence of cognitive impairment. Even mild cases of COVID-19 can lead to auditory cognitive impairment. Patients with cognitive complaints showed a marked decline compared to non-complaining individuals. However, non-complaining patients still exhibited poorer results compared to the control group.
In conclusion, this study demonstrated a significant decline in auditory cognitive abilities in post-COVID-19 patients compared to those without a history of COVID-19 infection.