By Whitney J. Palmer

How well a patient’s lungs recover post-COVID-19 infection is not necessarily linked with the severity of his or her disease course, but imaging shows that most patients do not experience long-term fibrosis.
To date, little research has focused on lung health post-recovery, and not much known about whether the lingering effects of the virus, such as fatigue and shortness-of-breath, are directly linked to the patient’s disease course. To answer that question, a group of investigators from Trinity College in Dublin tested more than 150 recovered patients and examined their post-COVID-19 chest X-rays and CT scans.

“We found that fatigue, ill-health, and breathlessness were all common following COVID-19,” said Liam Townsend, M.D., from the infectious disease department at St. James’ Hospital and the Trinity Translational Medicine Institute at Trinity College. “However, these symptoms appeared to be unrelated to the severity of initial infection or any single measurement at the time of an outpatient appointment.”

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