A Texas trauma surgeon says it is rare for X-rays from any of his patients with COVID-19 to return without dense scars. Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall tweeted, “Post-COVID lungs look worse than any kind of terrible smoker’s lung we’ve ever seen. And they collapse. And they clot. And the shortness of breath continues … and continues … and continues.”
“Everyone is so concerned about the issue of mortality and it is terrible and horrible,” she told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth. “But man, for all the survivors and the people who tested positive, this is 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 that patients who have had symptoms of COVID-19 show a severe chest X-ray every time, and those who were asymptomatic show a severe chest X-ray 70% to 80% of the time.
“There are still people who say, ‘I’m fine. I have no problems’, and you take the chest X-ray and they have a defective chest X-ray, ”she said.
In X-ray pictures 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, the white lines are indicative of scarring and congestion, while the COVID lung is filled with white.
“You will see a lot of these dense, white scars or all over the lung. Even if you are not experiencing any problems right now, the fact that you are on your chest X-ray – it is certainly indicative of you possibly having problems later,” she said .
Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall via CBS Dallas
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CBSN that some patients with severe COVID-19 may feel the impact for years to come.
“When someone is recovering from pneumonia, be it bacterial pneumonia or viral pneumonia, it will take some time for the chest X-rays to improve. The chest X-rays delay your clinical improvement. So you may be better, but your chest The radius -X still looks bad, “he said. “And we know that people with COVID-19 can get severe pneumonia, and some of that pneumonia can cause damage to the lungs that take time to heal. And some can be permanent.”
He said the potential long-term health consequences are another reason why people should take warnings about the disease seriously.
“It’s not something you can explode with. It’s not 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 basic functioning.”
Bankhead-Kendall said it is important that if you are short of breath after your COVID-19 goes away, you keep in touch with your primary care doctor.
She also points out, “There are no long-term implications of a vaccine that could be as bad as the long-term implications of COVID.”