Thread by @loscharlos

New study:

“The #LongCovid patient showed clear differences in the ventilated area compared to control subject.. uneven distribution of ventilation dominated the findings… a chest CT did not show pathological findings”
link.springer.com/article/10.100…

“Many #LongCovid patients suffer from dyspnea on exertion. To visualize exercise-induced dyspnea, a post-COVID patient and a healthy volunteer underwent an exercise test on a treadmill under stress relevant to everyday life monitored by electrical impedance tomography (EIT).”

“EIT is suitable for visualizing disturbed ventilation of the lungs, both at rest and under stress. The potential as a diagnostic tool in dyspnea assessment should be investigated”

“Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) radiation-free, non-invasive method to visualize lung ventilation. Our.. group has shown EIT can detect pathologies in #LongCovid patients. However, findings at rest can be misleading, as some pathologies only become visible on exertion.”

“Furthermore.. pulmonary function tests were normal in many #LongCovid patients, when comparing symptomatic & non-symptomatic post-COVID patients, no differences found.. Therefore we decided develop a suitable exercise test to visualize ventilatory deficits in post-COVID patient”

“The #LongCovid patient showed an even ventilation situation at rest..
During exercise, ventilated areas differed constantly. However, especially in anterior regions larger areas were partially absent from ventilation. The entire lung area was now affected by oscillating air.”

“The patient was exhausted after examination, agreed that this was a stress relevant to everyday life and was satisfied with the examination procedure.”

“To our knowledge, this is the first visualization of exercise-induced dyspnea in a #LongCovid patient using EIT. We demonstrate that using EIT under exercise is feasible and, therefore, is a potential tool to investigate exercise-induced dyspnea.”

“The question of EIT being pathologic remains unexplained.. underlying cause may be increased anaerobic metabolism, reflected in high post-exercise lactate & reduced peak oxygen uptake. Moreover, altered autoimmune dysfunction.. endothelial dysfunction, tissue damage” #LongCovid

“Furthermore, the difficulty of imaging this respiratory distress should be noted. For example, only about 20% of #LongCovid patients showed a pathology on CT or pulmonary function test at rest”

“EIT as a radiation-free, non-invasive and cost-effective method is suitable for visualizing a disturbed ventilation of the lungs, both at rest and under stress. The potential as a diagnostic tool in assessment of dyspnea should be investigated.” #LongCovid

So many of us with #LongCovid have chronic debilitating dyspnea with completely normal CT, PFT & DLCO.. desperately need new diagnostic to identify these perfusion issues found in XE MRI, EIT, etc.

This is not typical lung damage or airway inflammation — need new diagnostics.

H/t @biotechbuzznews great newsletter — high recommend!