Patients undergoing covid-19 often have respiratory problems. This applies to very seriously ill patients who eventually need to be ventilated and to patients who receive extra oxygen for support. But many patients who do not end up in the hospital sometimes suffer from long-term shortness of breath and shortness of breath.
Researchers from Amsterdam UMC and Radboudumc have found significant damage to the diaphragm in 26 deceased covid-19 patients. They have published their findings in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
The diaphragm is the main breathing muscle. The researchers found inflammatory reactions and connective tissue formation there. In some patients, the virus was even in the muscle cells. They were sometimes twenty times larger than normal and other times shriveled and much smaller than usual.
The diaphragm of the 26 deceased covid-19 patients was compared with that of eight deceased IC patients who did not have covid-19.
Small study
“It is indeed a small subgroup of critically ill ICU patients who have died from covid-19,” says lead researcher Coen Ottenheijm. He is professor of physiology at the Amsterdam UMC. “We see extreme changes in these patients that we have never seen before.
Ottenheijm says that his colleague Leo Heunks, a pulmonologist, told him that he saw many patients with severe shortness of breath while the amount of oxygen in their blood was completely normal. “We then suggested that there might be something wrong with the diaphragm. But it is so well encapsulated between the ribs that you cannot reach it in living patients.”
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