3 ms·

Texas trauma doctor says post-Covid lungs are more damaged than smokers'

• kgin 6y ago
  > Those who experienced COVID-19 symptoms have shown a severe chest X-ray every single time, Bankhead-Kendall told Nielsen, while asymptomatic patients showed severe chest X-rays 70 to 80 percent of the time. This is a really shocking statement to me. The claim is that 100% of symptomatic and 70-80% of asymptomatic covid patients have severe lung scarring?
  • Engineering-MD 6y ago
    Not really. First because it’s not true that all symptomatic people have X-ray findings, otherwise we wouldn’t struggle with false negatives as much! Secondly “severe” pathology on a chest X-ray doesn’t mean scarring. You can have consolidation or collapse without permanent damage, and most X-rays I have seen of people who have had Covid people have normal appearing X-rays a few months down the line. Some have severe scarring still visible months later but they are the exception not the rule.
    • kgin 6y ago
      Thank you. The article segued right from talking about scarring to severe findings and I wasn't sure how to take it.
• crowf 6y ago
  Mix that doctor's report with this [0] study saying that smoking lowers the risk of catching covid, makes me think that they should encourage people to start smoking until they get vaccinated. [0] https://www.qeios.com/read/WPP19W.3 https://www.qeios.com/read/WPP19W.3
  • gus_massa 6y ago
    Alternative possibilities: * Mild symptoms of Covid-19 are hidden by smoking symptoms, so they don't go to the doctor and are undetected. * Cancer and other smoking problems kill you before Covid-19 has an opportunity. They don't have a control group, they just compare to the average population. This is a red flag. Also, they are not testing everyone, they just count how many people they get in the hospital, that undercount the asymptomatic (and people with mild symptoms).