According to health experts’ analysis presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress and published in the journal EurekAlert! , coronavirus patients can suffer from long-term lung and cardiovascular damage, but the damage can be alleviated over time.

For the study, researchers recruited coronavirus patients from a Covid-19 ‘hot spot’ in the Tyrolean region of Austria.

In their presentation at the virtual congress, they discussed in detail the first 86 patients enrolled between April 29 and June 9.

The researchers said that during their first visit, more than half of the patients had at least one persistent symptom, predominantly breathlessness and coughing. CT scans still showed lung damage in 88 per cent of patients.

However, by the time of their next visit, 12 weeks after discharge, the symptoms had improved and lung damage was reduced to 56 per cent.

Lung repair

Sabina Sahanic, a clinical Ph.D student at the University Clinic in Innsbruck and part of the team that carried out the study, said in a statement: “The bad news is that people show lung impairment from Covid-19 weeks after discharge. The good news is that the impairment tends to ameliorate over time, which suggests the lungs have a mechanism for repairing themselves.”

A total of 56 patients (65 per cent) showed persistent symptoms at the time of their six-week visit. Breathlessness (dyspnoea) was the most common symptom (40 patients, 47 per cent).

This was followed by coughing (13 patients, 15 per cent). By the 12-week visit, breathlessness had improved and was present in 31 patients (39 per cent).

The CT scans showed that the score that defines the severity of overall lung damage decreased from eight points at six weeks to four points at 12 weeks.

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