Long-term Lung and Heart Damage in COVID-19 Patients

COVID-19 patients suffer from long-term lung and heart damage. A recent study shows that the damage improves with time and pulmonary rehabilitation plays an essential role in the recovery.

COVID-19 can result in long-term lung and heart damage in patients, which improves over time, according to a new study.

Researchers observed 86 patients hospitalized in Austria between 29 April and 9 June.

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‘Long-term lung and heart damage in COVID-19 patients improve over time. Coronavirus patients recover faster if they start pulmonary rehabilitation as soon as possible.’
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The patients were scheduled to return for evaluation 6, 12 and 24 weeks after their discharge from hospital.

During these visits, clinical examinations, laboratory tests, analysis of the amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide in arterial blood, lung function tests, computed tomography (CT) scans and echocardiograms were carried out.

In the first visit, patients predominantly had breathlessness and coughing. CT scans showed lung damage in 88% of the patients.

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By the 12-week visit, the symptoms had improved with breathlessness, and the lung damage was also reduced. The lungs must have a mechanism to repair themselves as the damage reduces with time

The various lung function tests are:

FEV1 -the amount of air that can be expelled forcibly in one second
FVC -the total volume of air expelled forcibly
DLCO -a test to measure how well oxygen passes from the lungs into the blood.

These measurements also improved between the visits at six and 12 weeks.

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The CT scans showed that the lung damage and damage due to inflammation and fluid in the lungs decreased.

At the 6-week visit, the echocardiograms showed that 48 patients had dysfunction of the left ventricle of the heart at the point when it is relaxing and dilating (diastole). Biological indicators of heart damage, blood clots and inflammation were all significantly elevated.

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Left ventricular diastolic dysfunction is not specific to COVID-19. It is more of a sign of the severity of the disease. The diastolic dysfunction also improved with time.

It is important to understand how patients have been affected long-term by the coronavirus. It might enable symptoms and lung damage to be treated much earlier and might have a significant impact on further medical recommendations and advice.

Patients with severe COVID-19 also need pulmonary rehabilitation. It is crucial for patients to recover fully.

Ms. Al Chikhanie conducted a walking test the benefits of pulmonary rehabilitation. She found that the sooner rehabilitation is started and the longer it lasted, the faster and better will be the improvement in patients' walking and breathing capacities and muscle gain.

Doctors should start rehabilitation as soon as possible, and patients should spend very less time being inactive.

It is clear from both these studies that rehabilitation, including physical and psychologic components, should be available for patients as soon as possible. It should continue for weeks if not months after they have been discharged from hospital to give patients the best chances of a good recovery.

Source-Medindia