MASSIVE PULMONARY FIBROSIS AFTER SEVERE BILATERAL PNEUMONIA  AS POST COVID-19 COMPLICATION

Beti Zafirova Ivanovska; Jagoda Stojkovikj

Beti Zafirova Ivanovska Institute for Epidemiology ,Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, R.North Macedonia
Jagoda Stojkovikj University Clinic of pulmonology and allergology, Medical Faculty, Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, R. North Macedonia

Abstract

A large number of hospitalized COVID-19 survivors show that persistent symptoms, radiographic abnormalities and physiological impairments exist months after the initial illness. Persistent chest imaging abnormalities and histopathological findings of lung fibrosis were also found in a majority of survivors of the SARS-CoV-1 suggesting that the SARS viruses may lead to a worse fibroproliferative response than other pneumonia. Our patient had a severe COVID-19 pneumonia, followed by massive infiltrative changes in both lungs in addition to massive pulmonary fibrosis. After the initial treatment in one of the COVID-19 centers in the Clinical Center in Skopje, the patient with post-COVID-19 (more precisely pulmonary fibrous changes of the lungs) was referred for further treatment to the University Clinic for Pulmonology in a severe clinical condition, where he was treated at an outpatient basis in the period of several months. During that time the condition improved, with a significant withdrawal of the X-ray finding of the lungs, which was registered on CT from 5.5.2021. He is still under observation. The robust responses of corticosteroid therapy in our case presenting a radiological pattern of organizing pneumonia allowed the patient to return to his baseline clinical condition. But due to the persistence of X-ray residual changes he is under our regular observation.

Keywords: COVID-19, bilateral pneumonia, massive pulmonary fibrosis.

https://doi.org/10.55302/JMS2143144zi

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