CLINICAL IMAGE
A 35-year-old man with fever, cough, and worsening short of breath was hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia. His chest computed tomography (CT) showed bilateral patchy consolidation and ground-glass opacities (GGO) (Figure 1A). He received oxygen and ciclesonide inhalation. Mechanical ventilation was not required. Twenty-six days after, CT on discharge showed a cystic feature in the left mediastinal side (Figure 1B). As he was physically recovered and the blood test did not show any inflammatory findings, only CT follow-up was conducted. Further four weeks later, a new cystic feature enclosed by thickened wall were found in the epiphrenic side (Figure 1C). Again he was asymptomatic with no abnormality in the blood test. Further four weeks later, both cysts had spontaneously disappeared without intervention (Figure 1D).
COVID-19 pneumonia is a viral infection which is reported to present with GGO, patchy shadowing, and interstitial abnormalities.1 Cystic features and pleural involvement are less reported except for mechanical ventilation .1,2 Its etiology is still poorly understood, but it may be caused by parenchymal ischemic damage and fibrosis.2 We want to emphasize that physicians should pay attention to follow up the late phase of COVID-19 pneumonia for better understanding its clinical course in the convalescing period.
Conflict of interest disclosure statement: None declared.
Ethical Approval : Not required.
Patient Consent : The patient provided written informed consent for his data to be published.
Author contributions : NH designed the conception, acquisition of the data and all authors wrote the manuscript.
Data availability statement : Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.