For most of the 97 million Americans who have had COVID, it’s a few days of aches, pains, and fatigue. But for some, the symptoms just don’t go away -- they are called COVID long haulers. And now, the world’s first 4D scan is changing how doctors diagnose and treat long COVID.
Amy Dutrisac remembers how she felt when she and her family realized they had caught COVID. “I had no energy. My lungs were aching, I had a horrible cough. It was scary,” she recalled.
After a few days, Amy’s daughter and husband started to feel better, but not Amy. “I got increasingly worse,” she said.
Amy was one of the first to undergo a new FDA-cleared four-dimensional scan of her lungs.
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"It can actually measure air coming from your upper lung on the right, lower lung on the right, upper and left lower lung,” said Dr. Ray Casciari a pulmonary specialist at the Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California.
The XV technology uses a fluoroscopy, which is in all hospitals, but the new software algorithms convert the scans, allowing doctors to see defects caused by long COVID. The color coding allowed Casciari to see immediately what other lung imaging methods like chest X-rays and CT scans cannot.
The scan helped Casciari know which targeted therapies to use on Dutrisac.
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“It shed light where light needed to be shed,” she said.
And now, she's breathing easy and free of her all of her symptoms.
“It's worth it. It changed my life,” she said.
Because there’s very little radiation exposure and the cost is low, about $500 per scan, the scan can be repeated several times. Without being able to successfully treat long COVID, patients could face a lifetime of respiratory problems and even develop conditions like adult-onset asthma. This scan is also being used successfully to treat veterans who have burn pit injuries and patients with emphysema and asthma.
