It’s been already revealed that COVID-19 can have lasting effects on the body, but there is hope that the patients cannot only recover over time, but can do so quicker with pulmonary rehabilitation, according to preliminary research.
It’s been also revealed that two early research reports to be presented Monday at the European Respiratory Society International Congress describe the ways in which severe infection with the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can leave lasting lung damage and. It’s also important to note that, in some cases, there can be even psychological wounds.
“The bad news is that people show lung impairment from COVID-19 weeks after discharge; the good news is that the impairment tends to ameliorate over time, which suggests the lungs have a mechanism for repairing themselves,” Dr. Sabina Sahanic, a clinical PhD student at the University Clinic in Innsbruck, Austria, who was involved in one of the reports, recently stated.
Analyzing patients suffering from severe COVID-19
The research included data about 86 patients who were suffering from severe COVID-19 who were enrolled in the study between April and June. These patients were evaluated six weeks after they were discharged from the hospital and then just recently evaluated again at 112 weeks.
CNN notes that each one of the evaluations included a clinical examination, lab testing, analysis of lung function, CT scans of the chest, and echocardiograms of the heart, Sahanic said.
CNN noted that the research would continue for a third evaluation at 24 weeks.
At six weeks, the experts said that they found that 65.9% of patients exhibited persistent Covid-19 symptoms, with shortness of breath and cough being the most common.
“About 50% of our study population showed a persisting shortness of breath six weeks after discharge from hospital that improved slightly until visit two,” Sahanic said.
“Regarding our CT findings, we found that about 88% of our study population still showed pathological findings in visit one, which ameliorated to 56% in visit two.”
