Background: There is a growing evidence of long-lasting lung changes after COVID-19. Our aim was to assess the degree of lung injury and evaluate the recovery process of 4-7-month-non-vaccinated convalescent patients discharged from hospital after moderate and severe COVID-19 pneumonia, who presented with symptoms of long-COVID.
Methods: On control lung CT after mean 5-month recovery period, we classified and determined the prevalence of residual radiological abnormalities in 39 symptomatic patients. To assess the advancement of the persisting changes we used the total severity score (TSS) and the chest CT score and then correlated the results with clinical data.
Results and conclusions: On follow-up CT images, 94.9% of patients showed persistent radiological abnormalities. The most frequent changes were ground-glass opacities (74.4%), reticular pattern (64.1%), fibrotic changes (53.8%), nodules (33.3%), bronchiectasis (15.4%), vascular enlargement (10.3%), and cavitation (5.1%). The median TSS score was 4.1 points (interquartile range 3), whereas the median of the chest CT score 5.4 points (interquartile range of 4.5). No significant differences were observed between sex subgroups and between the severe and moderate course groups. There were no association between both CT scores and the severity of the initial disease, indicating that, mean 5 months after the disease, pulmonary abnormalities reduced to a similar stage in both subgroups of severity.
Keywords: 4 months; 7 months; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; chest CT; convalescent patients; lung abnormalities; mean 5 months.