Covid-19 survivors with post-acute complications show signs of air trapping also known as small airways disease, which signals blockage at the small airway level.
Post-acute sequelae COVID-19 (PASC), better known as “long COVID,” are reported in more than half of COVID-19 survivors, according to studies.
Nearly 30 percent of patients with long-term COVID, even those who only had a mild infection, report having respiratory symptoms like cough and dyspnea.
Some COVID-19 survivors who have recurrent breathing problems may develop “air trapping”, a condition in which inhaled air becomes caught in the tiny airways of the lungs and cannot be expelled.
Researchers looked at 100 COVID-19 survivors who were still experiencing respiratory symptoms such as coughing and shortness of breath two months following their diagnosis.
In total, 33 people were admitted to hospitals, with 16 of them requiring intensive care.
The amount of lung area showing so-called ground-glass opacities on imaging examinations – a characteristic marker of COVID-19 lung damage – was higher in the hospitalized group than in those with milder disease, and it was significantly higher in patients who required intensive care.
However, the average percentage of lung impacted by air trapping was unaffected by COVID-19 severity.
It was 25.4 percent in non-hospitalized patients, 34.5 percent in hospitalized patients without intensive care, and 27.2 percent in critically sick patients.
In a group of healthy individuals, that number was only 7.3 percent.
According to research published on medRxiv ahead of peer review, the air trapping was mostly limited to patients’ narrowest airway passages.
“The long-term consequences” of these patients’ small airways disease “are not known,” the authors added.
Source: 10.1101/2021.05.27.21257944
Image Credit: Getty
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