A woman in the Netherlands has recovered from a seemingly mild COVID-19 infection, when both of her lungs suddenly collapsed, according to a new report.
The 38-year-old woman went to the emergency room after experiencing shortness of breath and a sharp pain in her chest, according to the report, published on January 22 in The Journal of Emergency Medicine. She said her symptoms started suddenly that day and they seem to be getting worse.
Five weeks earlier the woman had developed symptoms of COVID-19, including fever and muscle aches, and tested positive for the new coronavirus. At the time, she was able to treat her symptoms at home with paracetamol and an inhaler. She went through an initial recovery period after her illness, but then her new symptoms began.
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An X-ray at the ER showed that she had ‘bilateral pneumothorax’, which means both longe collapsed. A folded lung (pneumothorax) occurs when air leaks from the lung into the space between the lung and the chest wall, which puts pressure on the lung and prevents it from National Institute of Health.
The condition can be caused by trauma to the chest or by certain underlying lung conditions, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Patients placed in a ventilator are also at risk for a collapsed lung because the device can “blow over” the lung, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
However, the woman’s case was unusual because she had no risk factors for the condition and that she had not yet been admitted to hospital or put in a ventilator, the authors said.
Cases of collapsing lung in COVID-19 patients have been previously reported, but mostly in hospitalized patients. A study of approximately 6,500 COVID-19 patients in the UK, who were admitted to hospital in September 2020 The European Respiratory Journal, found that approximately 1% of individuals experience pneumothorax. Of the 60 patients described in the study as a collapsed lung, most received some form of ventilation support, but a third did not. Only four patients experienced pneumothorax in both lungs.
The authors of the new report, from Elisabeth TweeSteden Hospital in the Netherlands, concluded that emergency physicians should be aware of pneumothorax as a possible “delayed COVID-19-related complication.”
The cause of the woman’s collapsing lung is not clear. (If doctors can not identify the cause of a collapsing lung, it is called ‘spontaneous’ collapsing lung.) The authors can not say with certainty that COVID-19 caused the woman’s collapsing lung – the timing was possible coincidentally, they said. However, since the woman had no other risk factors for collapsing lung, COVID-19 may have played a role. For example, the infection may have caused microscopic changes in the tissue and blood vessels in the lungs that eventually resulted in pneumothorax, the authors said.
Doctors usually treat pneumothorax by inserting a needle-like instrument into the ribs to remove excess air around the patient’s lungs. Mayo Clinic. In the case of the woman, doctors used this tool to remove the air around her right lung. Her left lung was not treated because only a small portion of it collapsed and her doctors thought it would probably heal on its own. Indeed, four weeks later, both her lungs expanded to their normal size again, and she had no other lung complications, the report said.
Originally published on Live Science.