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

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.