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 tweeted about it“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 television station CBS. “But man, for all the survivors and the people who have tested positive, that’s going to be a problem.”
He has treated thousands of patients since March.
Bankhead-Kendall, an assistant professor of surgery at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, says patients who have had COVID-19 symptoms increasingly have a severe chest x-ray and those who were asymptomatic have a severe chest x-ray 70 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 this photo of a normal lung, a smoker and a COVID-19 lung that Dr. 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.
CBS Dallas
“You’ll see a lot of white, dense scars or you’ll see it all over your lungs. Even now you have no problem with having a chest x-ray. It’s certainly indicative that you might have problems later,” he said. Bankhead-Kendall points out.
He said it is too early to know the extent of the impact of COVID-19 on your body or whether the scars will heal, but it is important that if you have difficulty breathing after COVID-19 disappears, stay in contact with a primary care physician.
He adds: “There is no long-term implication of a vaccine that could be as bad as the long-term implications of COVID.”