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Post-COVID lungs worse than the worst smokers’ lungs,’ surgeon says

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Those who have had COVID-19 symptoms show a severe chest X-ray every time, while those who were asymptomatic show a severe chest X-ray 70 to 80% of the time, said Texas trauma surgeon Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall, according to CBS 11 News.

While medical experts are studying peculiar impacts caused by COVID-19 on the human body, Dr. Bankhead-Kendall revealed some of the COVID-19 effects, through one of her posts on Twitter, saying “post COVID lungs look worse than any type of terrible smokers lung we’ve ever seen.”

Dr. Bankhead-Kendall said that some patients will come into the ER after a car crash or a fall, and the patients’ chest scan is shocking. “There are still people who say I’m fine, I don’t have any issues and you pull up their chest X-ray and they absolutely have a bad chest X-ray,” she said. 

The Texas-based surgeon said that it’s very rare that any of her COVID-19 patients’ X-rays come back without dense scarring, as reported by CBS 11 News. She explained that even after recovering, you can see a lot of dense white material in the X-ray of the lungs of a COVID-19 patient, which indicates old scarring, maybe new scarring as well as congestion.

“You’ll either see a lot of that white dense scarring or you’ll see it throughout the entire lung. And if you’re not feeling problems now the fact that that’s on your chest X-ray, it sure is indicative of you possibly having problems later on,” she said. “Now we’re seeing the evolution of it and people coming in with collapsed lungs and clotted lungs and residual COVID. And it’s just, it’s terrible”.

Dr. Bankhead-Kendall said it’s too early to know the extent of COVID-19’s impact on your body or if the scarring will heal; however, she said it’s important that if you’re experiencing shortness of breath after your COVID-19 goes away, stay in touch with your primary care doctor. “My only hope in sharing this was that if it helped one person to mask up one more time, or if it helps one less person to get sick from it, then it’s worth it,” she said. 

ARTICLE: LIDIYA SHILU

SCIENCE/HEALTH EDITOR: KYLE SMITH

PHOTO CREDITS: KTXS

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