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Shocking Scan Reveals How Covid-19 Rips Through A Person's Lung

Shocking Scan Reveals How Covid-19 Rips Through A Person's Lung

Professor Stefan Heinz said this is a glowing example of why Aussies need to get vaccinated.

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

Shocking scans have revealed the extent to which coronavirus can rip through a patient's lungs.

Loads of people will point to the survival percentage rate for Covid-19 being in the high 90s, but the virus can still do long-term damage to your vital organs.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists has released a series of X-rays and CAT scans to prove this exact issue.

One image shared by the College shows a healthy individual's lungs from a bird's eye view. The black gaps show the lungs are fine and are essentially just filled with air.

Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists

However, the second CAT scan reveals how Covid-19 can turn those healthy lungs into a ball of inflammation.

College member Associate Professor Stefan Heinz told the Daily Telegraph: "The lungs in the patient who has Covid are all white and full of inflammatory cells and virus and abnormal cells.

"When it gets as bad as the one in the, in the CAT scan they can end up needing to have mechanical ventilation so you really have to pump the air in through an endotracheal tube.

"That's why he's got these tubes, that's the ETT or the endotracheal tube, that's where you have an operation that just goes down into your trachea and then mechanically ventilates you and that allows them to get a lot more oxygen to the parts of the lungs that are working."

Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists

Prof Heinz explained how all that inflammation within the Covid-19 infected patient means the individual would be using less than half of their lung's capacity.

"This guy, we know is really sick because he's got this tubing, he's also got a nasogastric tube that allows them to give medications directly into the stomach, because he won't be able to swallow," he said to News Corp.

This is a particularly extreme example of someone who has Covid-19 as Prof Heinz said they would probably be sedated and unconscious.

If the patient makes it through then they could have scarring on their lungs, which could affect them for weeks or even months after recovering from the obvious effects of coronavirus.

Prof Heinz says if there is one takeaway from these scans is that people need to get vaccinated as it will help reduce the side effects of coronavirus.

Featured Image Credit: Maxim Kiselev/TASS/Alamy Live News

Topics: Australia