Bouleversee wrote:Servodude: So far as I am aware, there isn't either but if the Prof. is saying that Covid. patients' lung abnormalities eventually disappear, it could mean that he is talking through his whatsit and giving false hope to PF patients whether or not they have had Covid or it could mean that something new has been discovered and I am trying to find out which that is. There are incidentally 2 drug treatments which slow the scarring progression, which can be rapid, but they are not offered till a very late stage because they are very expensive and don't work for long.
The GGO anomalies (ground glass opacities) as have been observed even in some asymptomatic COVID patients should fade with time. That's where your chest X-Ray looks like frosted glass, but it's not scarring per-se.
As for fibrosis of the lungs though, it seems to be a sad physiological feature of humans that we can't recover from any damage effectively (it appears the lungs scar in an way similar to keloids on the skin).
As far as I'm aware I do not yet think they have a good understanding of the mechanism by which COVID is scarring the lungs; but that they do know various blood treatments, like thinners, seem to help.
We won't really know the long term residual effects possible from COVID for a while, and it would be quite easy to underestimate them just now faced with its more acute presentation.
-sd