>>12610638>But hey that's fucking normal. If we decide to scan the kidneys and livers of people we will find cysts in those too that have no significance to clinical status.https://www.medpagetoday.com/pulmonology/generalpulmonary/86751Ground-glass opacities aren't likely to be found in healthy lungs, though, and wouldn't result from exposures like air pollution or smoking, radiologists said.
"It's safe to say that if you are a healthy person, you shouldn't have ground-glass opacities," said Paras Lakhani, MD, of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, speaking on behalf of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
Lakhani noted that a study of more than 200,000 patients found ground-glass opacities were present in 15% -- but these are patients "who have or are more likely to have cancer so this data isn't reflective of the prevalence in the general population."
"There are a lot of diseases that can cause ground-glass opacities, but in COVID-19, there's a distinct distribution, a preference for certain parts of the lung," chiefly in the lower lobes and periphery, and it appears multifocally and bilaterally, Bernheim said.
COVID-related ground-glass opacities also have a very round shape that's "really unusual compared with other ground-glass opacities," he said.
"Influenza or other pneumonias don't often have that pattern," he said. "Patients with flu can have ground-glass opacities, but they won't be in that distribution. It would be more in the middle parts of the lungs. And flu doesn't have these round, circular shapes."
