By Robert Preidt
HealthDay reporter
FRIDAY, Aug 20, 2021 (HealthDay News) – If you’ve had a bout of COVID-19 and your lungs have been pounding, new research has reassuring news: you are likely to be spared long-term respiratory damage.
The scientists studied COVID-19 survivors who had asymptomatic, moderate, or severe COVID-19 infections and who also underwent independent elective lung surgery (e.g., to treat lung nodules or lung cancer) at some point after their recovery from COVID-19.
In all patients, benign lung tissue from around the nodules or tumors showed no detectable permanent lung damage directly related to COVID-19.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, a big question has been whether COVID-19 will damage our lungs in the long term or permanently,” said lead study author Dr. Zaid Abdelsattar, a thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon at Loyola Medicine in Maywood, Ill.
“This research gave us the rare opportunity to examine the asymptomatic survivors of COVID-19 and make observations that will help us answer that question,” he said in a press release from Loyola.
Autopsies of deceased COVID-19 patients and studies in patients with end-stage COVID-19 lung disease have identified a number of serious lung problems, the researchers noted.
“More research is needed into why some patients make full recovery and others do not. Our study shows that if you contract COVID-19 and then make full clinical and imaging recovery, your lung tissue is also likely to be completely healed.” without permanent damage, “said Abdelsattar.
The study was recently published online in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.
About 209.5 million people worldwide have contracted COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and there have been more than 4 million deaths according to Johns Hopkins University.
More information
The American Lung Association has more to do with COVID-19.
SOURCE: Loyola Medicine, press release, Aug 12, 2021
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