The lesions on the lungs of some coronavirus survivors are worse than in those who smoke, a trauma surgeon in Texas recently said when he could have just one of the possible long-term effects this disease could have on its victims. discuss.
“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,” Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall wrote in a recent Twitter post.
“And they collapsed. And they solidified. And the shortness of breath continued … & on … & on,” she added.
In an interview with CBS Dallas, Bankhead-Kendall said that most of the coronavirus patients she treated “showed a serious x-ray of the chest every time”, pointing out that even those who contracted the virus had no symptoms. had not – they were asymptomatic – ‘X-ray on the chest about 70% to 80% of the time.
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In a clean X-ray, Bankhead-Kendall explained, a patient’s lungs would look black. In a smoker, the X-ray will usually reveal white lines, which she says indicate scarring and congestion. In a COVID-19 survivor, an X-ray usually shows the lungs filled with white, indicating severe scarring and congestion.
“You’ll see a lot of the white dense scars, or you’ll see them all over the lung. And if you’re not having problems right now, the fact that it’s on your chest is a sign that you’m possibly having problems. Later, she told the news station.
“All the survivors and the people who tested positive … this is going to be a problem,” she later added.
Experts are still studying the lasting effect that the new virus may have on those who survive it. Researchers have already identified what is called ‘long COVID’, when patients still experience certain symptoms of the virus months after recovery, such as severe fatigue, shortness of breath and headache.
A study in October, for example, suggested that older patients, those with a higher BMI and those who are female, are more likely to be at risk of long-term COVID.
More recently, a study published over the weekend promoted existing evidence that long-covid is a reality for many people who contracted the new coronavirus, and researchers are finding in what is said to be the largest cohort study on the subject to date. then, for some, certain COVID-19 symptoms – namely fatigue and muscle weakness – persist until six months after the initial infection.
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The researchers found that approximately 76% of patients admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 reported at least one symptom of the new virus months after they were discharged, with fatigue or muscle weakness and sleep problems being the most common.
“These results support that those with serious illnesses need treatment after discharge,” the researchers concluded. “Longer follow-up studies in a larger population are needed to understand the full spectrum of health consequences of COVID-19.”