The KEM Hospital in Mumbai city is currently witnessing an unprecedented situation where people who are cured of Covid-19 symptoms are returning back to the hospital after a month or so with pulmonary fibrosis – severe scarring of tissues in the lungs that causes shortness of breath, reports Mumbai Mirror.

Around 22 patients with pulmonary fibrosis are being currently treated at the hospital. These patients will require oxygen support for long durations and, in some cases, for the rest of their life, the report said.

The KEM Hospital is one of the largest public hospitals managed by Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.

KEM’s ten-member Critical Care Committee – comprising cardiologists, neurosurgeons, pulmonologists, endocrinologists, anesthesiologists and nephrologists are keeping a close watch on these patients as they are still studying how the damage was caused to the vital organ after the virus was treated and the patients were discharged.

Though it is well known that Covid-19 directly impacts lungs, it is not clear how these current 22 patients got pulmonary fibrosis as they do not have any history of lung injury or breathing difficulties when they were discharged after being treated for Covid-19.

According to the hospital, the patients are being treated with anti-fibrosis drugs and the only common thread running through all 22 cases is that they all had pneumonia when they were treated for Covid-19.

The hospital also added that all these patients who are back for treatment had spent over a month in the ICU here and were treated with new drugs such as Tocilizumab and Remdesivir.

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