Dysfunctional breathing after COVID-19: recognition and ramifications

Extract Protracted breathlessness in the wake of a COVID-19 infection is the consequence not of one disease process but many. COVID-19 pneumonia can severely damage lung architecture, with resultant long-term reductions in respiratory function, gas exchange and exercise capacity: a pattern of injury few respiratory physicians would fail to recognise. A more diagnostically challenging presentation can be that of the patient with a prior mild COVID-19 infection who lacks evident structural cardiopulmonary disease, who nevertheless suffers from marked, even debilitating, dyspnoea. Dysfunctional breathing (DB) has emerged as one important, and likely underrecognised, driver of dyspnoea among those with long COVID [1–3].
Source: European Respiratory Journal - Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Editorials Source Type: research