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The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc around the world as it continues to spread at an alarming rate. Millions of people have already succumbed to the nasty disease. There are many more who have survived the virus and many more who never knew if they had caught it before because they may have remained asymptomatic. However, the observations made by a trauma surgeon based in Texas, USA, which she recently posted on social media are quite disturbing.
Dr Brittany Bankhead-Kendall of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center has found that the lungs of recovered COVID-19 patients appear to be in a much worse condition than smokers. The doctor has been treating patients since the start of the pandemic and has observed countless x-rays of patients infected with COVID-19. She said that the lungs of the affected patients showed intense scarring.
She recently took to Twitter to say that “post-Covid lungs look worse than any kind of terrible smoker’s lung we’ve ever seen.” She said those lungs collapse and clot as the shortness of breath continues.
Check out his post on Twitter:
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but “post-Covid” lungs look worse than ANY type of terrible smoker’s lungs we’ve ever seen.
And they collapse. And they clot off.
And the shortness of breath lingers on… & on… & on.
— Brittany Bankhead MD (@BBankheadMD) January 4, 2021
Bankhead-Kendall said x-rays from smokers’ lungs appear a bit blurry, but those from COVID-19 patients are almost completely white, indicating intense scarring and a lack of air entering the organ.
The doctor said everyone is worried about death rates, which is surely cause for concern, but the long-term effects of the virus on survivors are also a big threat.
“All of the survivors who have tested positive, (for them) it’s going to be a problem,” Bankhead-Kendall said as quoted by the DailyMail.
She said every COVID-19 patient she had treated had a severe x-ray. Even among asymptomatic patients, 70 to 80 percent of them had severe radiologic findings. She said there are people who say they are fine, but when their x-ray is checked, “they have absolutely a bad chest x-ray.”
Bankhead-Kendall compared three x-rays, one from a healthy person, one from a smoker and one from a COVID-19 patient.
The healthy person’s x-ray showed a lot of dark space, indicating that they are able to inhale a fair amount of air. The smoker’s x-ray showed white lines and a blur that represented inflammation and damage to the walls of the lungs. The worst results were from the COVID-19 patient, who showed the lungs almost completely white, indicating pulmonary opacity, which means the patient is unable to absorb enough oxygen in the lungs.
Bankhead-Kendall warned that even those who are not currently having difficulty may have problems later.
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