14 January 2021
(WHDH) – A trauma surgeon says X-rays of her COVID-19 patients often come back with scars and that they “look worse than any lung of a terrible smoker.”
Dr Brittany Bankhead-Kendall, an assistant professor of surgery at Texas Tech University, recently tweeted: ‘I do not know who needs to hear this, but’ post-Covid ‘lungs look worse than ANY kind of terrible smoker’s lungs us ‘ever seen. ”
I do not know who should hear it, but ‘post-Covid’ lungs look worse than ANY kind of horrible smoker’s lungs we’ve ever seen.
And they collapse. And they solidify.
And the shortness of breath stays on … & on … & on.
– Brittany Bankhead-Kendall MD (@BKendallMD) 4 January 2021
“All the survivors and the people who tested it positive are going to have a problem,” Bankhead-Kendall told KTVT-TV.
Bankhead-Kendall has been treating thousands of symptomatic and asymptotic COVID-19 patients since March, when the pandemic began to rage across the country.
People with severe symptoms always show a serious x-ray on the chest, Bankhead-Kendall told the news office. People with asymptosis show severe X-rays about 70 to 80 percent of the time.
“There are still people who say, ‘I’m fine, I have no problems,’ and you’ll pull up their x-rays and they have absolutely bad X-rays, ‘” Bankhead-Kendall said.
At the moment, Bankhead-Kendall believes it is too early to know if the lesions of the lung are healing.
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