The lungs of a COVID-19 patient sound like a combination of murmurs, crackling, and wet rales from two separate conditions. "It's like listening to two separate patients at once," commented the doctors.

According to WHO, 80 percent of people who contract the coronavirus recover without any specific treatment. One in six people becomes seriously ill, with many other symptoms including respiratory problems.

Professor John Wilson, a pulmonologist at the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, described for the Australian issue of The Guardian what happens to lungs that have become acutely inflamed by a coronavirus infection.

This pneumonia differs from most common pneumonia caused by bacteria (about 70 percent of all pneumonia) in that not only are they not affected by antibiotics, but it also attacks the entire surface of the lungs, not only minor ones parts thereof.1

The lungs affected by the coronovirus - similarly to the bacteria of pneumonia - react with exudate in response to inflammation of the alveoli and interstitial tissue. The exudate floods the air transfer pathways, reducing their efficiency. The result is shallow and faster breathing, bronchospasm, coughing and shortness of breath.

Whistling, murmuring, rattling

This may explain the noises doctors hear when auscultating COVID-19 altered lungs. Many confirm that they hear such an intensity of sounds for the first time in their life.

In the initial stage of the disease, breathing speeds up, then you can hear a faint wheezing while exhaling. The onset of pneumonia is accompanied by crackles (similar to crackling sounds in a wood fire) and sounds of bronchial breathing.

The disease can eventually lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome, which in auscultation produces a faint breathing noise, more thick crackles and a low-frequency murmur due to the presence of mucus.

A normal breath is regular, evenly deep, effortless. The correct number of breaths is 12-18 per minute. On the recording we hear basic respiratory murmurs:

  • an alveolar breathing noise that is slightly similar to a sound, in a whisper of the uttered "f" against the narrowed mouth.It occurs when the normal alveoli of the lungs expand and fill with air, and is caused by the expansion of the lung by inspiration. It is much shorter on exhalation (1/5 part inhalation)
  • bronchial respiratory noise (similar to the sound of inhaling and exhaling air with the position of the mouth as a whispered "h").2

A Belgian doctor who works at a hospital in Aalst and deals with the treatment of people infected with coronavirus, also showed pictures of young people showing what the lungs of their peers who have contracted the coronavirus look like.

And for the sake of comparison, it sounds like a he althy person's breath:

Category:

Infectious diseases