FLORIDA – A doctor at the USF is issuing an alert about COVID-19 and his lungs. The radiographs and tests she is looking at show worse post-COVID damage than those who have smoked for years. The damage is seen even in some patients who have never seen a symptom.
“When the lung is scarred, it heals, period,” said Dr. Gaetane Michaud, a pulmonologist with USF.
When the pandemic started in March, it was on the front lines in New York City. Since then, she has reviewed hundreds of post-COVID lung X-rays and lung scans.
Dr. Michaud shows a scan of a pair of healthy lungs. They are filled with an air that looks black. It then shows a scan of a smoker’s lungs with emphysema damaging the air sacs. It then shows a post-COVID lung scan. The lungs are cloudy and full of white. This white is a strong scar and, unlike other organs, the lungs do not regenerate.
USF Health
“You have like, it’s almost like a pile of concrete around a certain area, so nothing can get through that concrete, so oxygen can’t get into the body because the air sacs are so scarred around them that oxygen doesn’t completely, ”she explained.
She says that although the inflammation may improve, the scar that is left behind is yours for the rest of your life. Dr. Michaud reports that in almost every scan and X-ray she reviewed, she saw lung damage, even though the patient barely had any symptoms or none related to the lungs.
“You know, what is really impressive?” she asked. “When you see patients who have few symptoms, and then they arrive with these scarred lungs.”
In the worst case, your only chance of survival is a lung transplant. But there is good news. Unlike their time in New York, doctors learned more about the virus and the best therapies to lessen the severity of the damage.
In the beginning, doctors quickly placed a patient who was struggling to breathe. Later, they found that ventilators can increase lung damage.
“It is very similar to end-stage lung disease,” she said, as she examined COVID’s lung scans.
COVID’s severity to the lungs is comparable to smoking, but there is a big difference – time.
“We are not talking about decades, we are talking about days or weeks, we are seeing these horrible changes in the lungs, some are irretrievable,” she said.
She suggests that if you’ve taken COVID-19, with or without symptoms, talk to your doctor to see if a scan of your lungs is right for you.