Post-Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pulmonary Fibrosis: Wait or Needs Intervention

Yoon, Hee-Young; Uh, Soo-Taek

doi:.0..

Tuberc Respir Dis > Accepted Articles

Review

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4046/trd.2022.0053 [Accepted]
Published online June 20, 2022.

Post-Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pulmonary Fibrosis: Wait or Needs Intervention

Hee-Young Yoon, M.D., Ph.D., Soo-Taek Uh, M.D., Ph.D.

Division of Allergy and Respiratory Diseases, Soonchunhyang University Seoul Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Correspondence: Soo-Taek Uh, Tel: +82-2-709-9195, Fax: +82-2-709-9083,
Email: uhs@schmc.ac.kr

Received: 22 April 2022 • Revised: 25 May 2022 • Accepted: 15 June 2022

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a major health burden worldwide, with over 450 million confirmed cases and 6 million deaths. Although the acute phase of COVID-19 management has been established, there is still a long way to go to evaluate the long-term clinical course or manage complications due to the relatively short outbreak of the virus. Pulmonary fibrosis is one of the most common respiratory complications associated with COVID-19. Scarring throughout the lungs after viral or bacterial pulmonary infection have been commonly observed, but the prevalence of post-COVID-19 pulmonary fibrosis is rapidly increasing. However, there is limited information available about post-COVID-19 pulmonary fibrosis, and there is also a lack of consensus on what condition should be defined as post-COVID-19 pulmonary fibrosis. During a relatively short follow-up period of approximately 1 year, lesions considered related to pulmonary fibrosis often showed gradual improvement; therefore, it is questionable at what time point fibrosis should be evaluated. In this review, we investigated the epidemiology, risk factors, pathogenesis, and management of post-COVID-19 pulmonary fibrosis.

Key Words: coronavirus disease 2019, pulmonary fibrosis, complications, incidence, pathogenesis, prognosis, treatment