Post-COVID Lungs Worse Than the Worst Smokers' Lungs, Surgeon Says

CBS News reports that Texas Tech University trauma surgeon Brittany Bankhead-Kendall found post-COVID lungs look worse than any smoker's lung ever seen on x-rays. "For all the survivors and the people who have tested positive this is . . . going to be a problem," she said. Bankhead-Kendall explained that patients who have had COVID-19 symptoms exhibit a severe chest x-ray every time, and asymptomatic subjects have a severe chest x-ray 70 percent to 80 percent of the time. X-rays of a normal lung, a smoker's lung, and a COVID-19 lung show the healthy lungs are clean with a lot of black, mainly air. White lines in the smoker's lung indicate scarring and congestion, while the COVID lung is saturated with white. "Even 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," Bankhead-Kendall said. Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health's Amesh Adalja said some people with severe COVID-19 could suffer ill effects for years to come. "Even if you survive, you still may be left with some severe complications that make it very hard for you to go back to your baseline functioning," he noted.