COVID-19 can have long term effects for recovered patients

 For armchair unqualified  “medical” critics who have plugged social networks with unverified claims that  COVID-19  is little more than the common cold or the flu, the news is emerging daily that the recovery process can be long and painful with possible neurological damage.

Now pulmonologists agree that the disease is leaving scars in the lungs of patients who were severe and outperformed the virus and in those who required mechanical ventilation.

The specialist Fernando Marquez says that this is known as “pulmonary fibrosis”, which, at times, causes the person to agitate.

In addition, he explained that they are observing cases of “pulmonary hypertension” and “organized pneumonia.”

The medical community agrees that it is too early to draw conclusions about the future effects of Covid-19 in infected patients, especially those who were in the most serious condition, hospitalized both in wards and in intensive care units.

However, because it is a respiratory disease, specialists, are observing and analyzing some sequelae of the virus in patients who were connected to mechanical ventilators.

Fernando Márquez, stressed that between 30% and 40% of patients with severe Covid-19 who needed artificial respiration can be left with sequelae.

To get an idea, the estimates of the Health authorities indicate that 85% of those who tested positive for the virus in the country will not need to go to a hospital, 10% will go to the ward and 5% will go to intensive care. This last group is the one that generally needs mechanical fans.

In Márquez’s words, they have been observing three types of complications in seriously ill patients, once they are discharged. “Pulmonary fibrosis”, which are scars in the lungs that cause, at times, the person to agitate.

The second is “pulmonary hypertension,” which causes shortness of breath and causes the heart to overload.

And the third is “organized pneumonia,” in which an area of ​​the lung remains inflamed for a long time, even though the person no longer has the virus.

Lack of pulmonologists
One of the great challenges for the health system, once the pandemic is controlled, will be to provide adequate care to these patients, since there are few pulmonologists in the country.

According to Márquez, there are approximately 30 active pulmonologists in Panama, and of those, the majority is dedicated to caring for patients with Covid-19 for about 16 hours a day in hospitals.

“That means that at the moment it will be very difficult to follow up with an outpatient consultation for these seriously ill patients who have overcome the virus. And in the case that we control the pandemic, we pulmonologists will be the last group of specialists that will open the outpatient clinic, due to the nature of the disease and our specialty, ”he said.

The pulmonologist noted that all patients who left intensive care will have to undergo lung function tests to determine which ones will require oxygen or rehabilitation.

Pulmonologist Reynaldo Chandler said that people who have faced the most severe form of the disease, when they recover, develop limitations in their functional capacity, which will prevent them from recovering after several weeks. He specified that these patients can present changes in the structure of the lung and also in its function.