One doctor treating COVID-19 patients in New York says it was like altitude sickness. It was “as if tens of thousands of my fellow New Yorkers are stuck on a plane at 30,000 feet and the cabin pressure is slowly being let out. These patients are slowly being starved of oxygen,” saidCameron Kyle-Sidell, MD, an emergency room and critical care doctor at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn
As doctors treat more patients who are severely ill from COVID-19, they’re noticing differences in how their lungs are damaged.
Some patients coming to the hospital have very low oxygen levels in their blood, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from talking to them. They don’t seem starved of oxygen. They may be a little confused. But they aren’t struggling to breathe.
When doctors take pictures of their lungs -- either with a CT scanner or an X-ray machine -- those also look fairly healthy. The lungs may have a few areas of cloudiness and crazing, indicating spots of damage from their infection, but most of the lung is black, indicating that it is filled with air.
According to Gattinoni, about 30% of COVID-19 patients who come to the hospital have more classic symptoms of acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS. Their lungs are cloudy on imaging scans, and they’re stiff and inflamed, showing that they aren’t working well. The patients also have low levels of oxygen in their blood, and they are struggling to breathe. They look like patients with severe pneumonia caused by a virus. This is the type of lung trouble doctors are more used to seeing with respiratory diseases like influenza and SARS.