A Texas doctor has determined a trend in her patients that are experiencing a devastating side effect of COVID-19: severely scarred lungs.
Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall, a trauma surgeon at Texas Tech University Health Science Center, stated she is seeing a trend in scarred lungs in some patients who previously had Covid-19 that’s far worser than what she has seen in the lungs of smokers. She noticed the lung scarring in X-rays she previously took for unrelated health issues.
Dr. Brittany informed news reporters, “I started to realize that all of these patients that we’re seeing, who are having chest X-rays that have had COVID in the past, are showing up abnormal.”
“It looks like a lot dense scarred tissue and that extends throughout the entire lung,” she added. “We are also seeing signs of congestion and fibrosis.”
She also stated that it is not clear if the lung scarring could regress over time but said it is highly unlikely, suggesting that the scarring could be permanent and could cause further health problems down the road for patients.
Dr. Brittany stated that there is further research that needs to be done. She also added however, not every post-COVID X-ray she has seen had scarred lung tissue.
“I’ve definitely seen patients who have had COVID and they don’t have the lung scarring,” she mentioned.
Bankhead-Kendall stated that she doesn’t expect or encourage people to go out and get X-ray testing done if they have had the coronavirus. However, she does encourage people to get the vaccine, when it is available, and to let those who have came up positive to inform physicians during their visit. She also urged individuals to please take this virus very serious.
COVID-19 deaths are on the rise and nearly two-thirds of all American states as a winter surge pushes the overall toll toward 400,000 amid warnings that a new, highly contagious COVID variant has taken place.
Although the variant does not cause more severe illness, it can cause more deaths and hospitalizations because it spreads more quickly and easily. In Britain, it has aggravated a severe outbreak that has swamped hospitals, it is also the blame for sharp leaps on cases in other Europe countries.
Many U.S. States are currently under extreme strain. The 7-day rolling average of daily deaths are on the rise in 30 states including the District of Columbia. On Monday, the U.S. death toll surpassed 398,000, according to the date collected by Johns Hopkins University. This is by far the highest recorded death toll of any country in the world in this present moment.
As the surge continue to rise, a vast effort is on the move to get Americans vaccinated, but the campaign is off to an uneven start, where some Americans are past due for their second dose, and many states have run out of vaccinations.
According to the latest federal data, about 31.2 million doses have been distributed, but only about 10.6 million individuals have received only one dose.
