A Texas trauma surgeon says it’s rare for X-rays from any of his COVID-19 patients to return without dense scars. Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall he tweeted“Post-COVID lungs look worse than any kind of terrible smoker’s lung we’ve ever seen. And they collapse. They clot. And the shortness of breath persists … and yet … and so on.” “.
“Everyone is so worried about mortality and that’s terrible and it’s terrible,” he told Dallas-Fort Worth television. “But man, for all the survivors and the people who have tested positive, that’s going to be a problem.”
Bankhead-Kendall, an assistant professor of surgery at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, has treated thousands of patients since the pandemic began in March.
CBS Dallas
She says patients who have had symptoms of COVID-19 each time have a severe chest x-ray and those who were asymptomatic have a severe chest x-ray 70% to 80% of the time.
“There are still people who say‘ I’m fine. I have no problem “and you take the chest x-ray off them and they have a bad chest x-ray,” he said.
In the X-ray photos of a normal lung, a smoker, and a COVID-19 lung that Bankhead-Kendall shared with CBS Dallas, healthy lungs are clean with a lot of black, which is mostly air. In the smoker’s lung, white lines are indicative of scarring and congestion, while the COVID lung is filled with white.
“Either you’ll see a lot of these white, dense scars or you’ll see it all over your lungs. Even if you don’t have problems now, the fact that it’s on your chest x-ray is sure to indicate that you may have problems later. “, he said.
Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall via CBS Dallas
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CBSN that some patients with severe COVID-19 could feel the impact in the coming years.
“When someone recovers from pneumonia, either bacterial pneumonia or viral pneumonia, it will take some time for their chest X-rays to improve. Chest X-rays are delayed in their clinical improvement. So maybe it will be better X-rays still look bad, “he said. “And we know that people with COVID-19 can get severe pneumonia and that some of those pneumonias will cause damage to the lungs that will take time to heal. And some may be permanent.”
He said the possible long-term health consequences are another reason why people should take warnings about the disease seriously.
“It’s not something you can explode. It’s not something you want to have. Because, even if you survive, you may still have some serious complications that make it very difficult for you to get back to baseline operation.”
Bankhead-Kendall said it’s important that if you have difficulty breathing after COVID-19 disappears, keep in touch with your primary care physician.
He also notes, “There is no long-term implication of a vaccine that could be as bad as the long-term implications of COVID.”