Some Signs of Recovery From Severe Covid - The New York Times

In two early studies, researchers said some patients showed signs of healing just weeks after leaving the hospital.

When Annie Coissieux tried to stand up for the first time after weeks in the hospital battling Covid-19, she couldn’t get on her feet.

When she went home three weeks later, Ms.

Lingering shortness of breath and diminished stamina have dogged many Covid patients whose lungs were viciously attacked by the coronavirus.

Early in the pandemic, doctors worried that Covid might cause irreversible damage leading to lung fibrosis — progressive scarring in which lung tissue continues to die even after the infection is gone.

According to the World Health Organization, about 80 percent of patients have mild to moderate symptoms, 15 percent develop a severe form of the disease and roughly five percent like Ms.

About 20 percent of hospitalized Covid patients wound up in intensive care units, where many needed ventilators, according to.

He added that one study of SARS, another coronavirus, published in the journal Chest found that about 59 percent of survivors had no lung impairment after one year, while one-third still had some lung abnormalities, which he described as “mild.”.

During this year’s pandemic, few patients suffered such severe lung damage that they required lung transplants, still a rarity worldwide.

Yara Al Chikhanie, a doctoral student in lung physiopathology at the Dieulefit Santé, cited the clinic’s rehabilitation study of 19 patients at the session.

For patients who were bedridden or intubated in intensive care units for weeks, the ability to breathe on their own was impaired.

“It seems that most of these more severe patients recover from severe lung injury,” said Dr.

Fluids were clearing from their lungs, and the white-glass lesions often seen in Covid pneumonia were lessening, sometimes disappearing entirely and sometimes noticeable only as thin white bands.

At the time the patients were discharged from the hospital, 88 percent had lung damage, but 12 weeks later, only 56 percent did.

“Despite his 78 years, despite Covid pneumonia, he can manage this,” she said.

Our lungs have good inner healing mechanisms, said Dr.

Galiatsatos said, adding that the lungs will adapt.

Even some patients originally deemed as candidates for a lung transplant managed to recuperate and go home without needing one, said Dr.

But research is still very nascent about finding the best therapies to help Covid survivors restore their strength and lung capacity