As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, shocking images have emerged of the lungs of two victims of COVID-19.
The images show how the virus affected the lungs of the Wuhan residents in their 60s on holiday in Italy.
The 67-year-old man and 65-year-old woman were the country’s first recorded victims of the disease.
Researchers at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Rome studied the two individuals after they were diagnosed with the virus on January 29, 2020, according to a report.
X-ray scans and CT images reveal how COVID-19 took its serious toll on their lungs and respiratory system in a similar but distinct way to both SARS and MERS.
Both individuals affected by the disease were in a critical but stable condition in intensive care when the study was written.
Writing in a scientific paper due to be published next month in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, the Italian searchers describe the country’s first patients.
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After experiencing respiratory issues and a fever the pair underwent laboratory tests which confirmed infection with the SARS-COV-2 virus.
Both individuals went on to develop adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
It took just four days for the patients to suffer respiratory failure, and two days later both people were reliant on a ventilator to breathe.
Early x-ray images revealed “ground-glass opacities” — where air spaces in their lungs become filled with a substance, usually pus, blood or water.
Ground-glass opacity is frequently associated with the thickening or swelling of soft tissue, known as consolidation.
A phenomenon called crazy paving was also seen, which indicates thickening of the septum and intralobular septum, which can inhibit performance.
Patients with COVID-19 have shown fluid or debris-filled sacs in the lungs, which may get progressively worse as the illness develops.
The study also discovered the blood vessels taking blood from the heart to the lungs to become oxygenated were becoming enlarged.
This increased size, known as hypertrophy, reduces the space for air in-between, causing difficulty breathing and respiratory problems.
This sign is likely to be related to the hyperemia — excess blood in the lung’s vessels — caused by the viral infection.
The researchers write: “Lung patterns in both patients were characterised by hypertrophy of the pulmonary vessels, which are increased in size, particularly in areas with more pronounced interstitial impairment.
“This new radiological evidence suggests a different pattern of lung involvement compared to those observed in the other known severe coronavirus infections (SARS and MERS).”
