A trauma surgeon in Texas says it’s rare for X-rays of one of her COVID-19 patients to come back without dense scars. Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall tweeted, “Post-COVID lungs look worse than any terrible smoker’s lung type. And they collapse. And they clot. And the shortness of breath lingers … and so … and on.”
“Everyone is so concerned about mortality and that’s awful and awful,” she told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth. “But man, for all the survivors and the people who tested positive, this is … it’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 started in March.
CBS Dallas
She says patients with COVID-19 symptoms show a severe chest X-ray every time, and those who were asymptomatic show a serious chest X-ray 70% to 80% of the time.
“There are still people who say, ‘I’m fine. I don’t have any problems, “and you pull up their chest X-ray and they definitely have a bad chest X-ray,” she said.
On X-rays of a normal lung, a smoker’s lung, and a COVID-19 lung that Bankhead-Kendall shared with CBS Dallas, the healthy lungs are clean with a lot of black, which is mostly air. In the smoker’s lung, white lines indicate scarring and congestion, while the COVID lung is filled with white.
“You will either see a lot of those white, dense scars, or you will see it all over the lungs. Even if you don’t feel any problems now, the fact that it shows on your chest X-ray is an indication that you may be later. have problems, ”she said.
Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall via CBS Dallas
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CBSN that some patients with severe COVID-19 could feel the impact for years to come.
“When someone is recovering from pneumonia, be it bacterial pneumonia or viral pneumonia, it will take time for the chest X-rays to improve. Chest X-rays are lagging behind your clinical improvement. You may be better, but your chest X-rays still look bad, ”he said. “And we know that people with COVID-19 can get serious pneumonia, and some of that pneumonia will lead to damage to the lungs that takes time to heal. And some of it could be permanent.”
He said the potential long-term health consequences are another reason people should take warnings about the disease seriously.
“It’s not something you can cancel. This isn’t something you want to have. Because even if you survive, you can still have some serious complications that make it very difficult for you to get back to baseline functioning.” “
Bankhead-Kendall said it’s important that if you feel short of breath after your COVID-19 goes away, you keep in touch with your primary care physician.
She also points out, “There is no long-term implication of a vaccine that could ever be as bad as the long-term implications of COVID.”