Poor air quality, cold weather hit asthma, COPD, Covid recovered patients

Nagpur: The dip in temperature and poor air quality due to increase in pollution levels have badly affected the Covid recovered, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonoary disease (COPD) patients.
Asthma and chest OPDs are running full with patients who were healthy just one week back.
The patients, including a lot of kids, are suddenly now wheezing, coughing, having fever, cold and cough.
City pulmonologists said they are also seeing a lot of patients who recovered from Covid in March-April period beside regular asthma and COPD patients. Some of these patients were mild cases and didn’t require hospitalization or oxygen during Covid infection, doctors said.
Child specialists said kids have been at receiving end of the poor air quality to a great extent.
Doctors advised that people need to be alert and immediately see a doctor in case they get any symptom.
Pulmonologist Dr Ravindra Sarnaik said he has been seeing a lot of Covid recovered patients in last one week. “With onset of winter and post Diwali generally, there is a spike in cases of asthma and COPD patients. This time, recovered patients, who had mild Covid, are also more. They complain of tightness or heaviness in chest, cough, and cold,” he said.
Dr Sarnaik, who is member of district Covid task force, said some tests are prescribed for complete evaluation of such cases. “If Covid recovered patients have any symptoms, they must immediately see a doctor. Lung function test, chest Xray, allergy blood tests are done,” he said.
As the pandemic turned ‘endemic’ and fears evaporating from minds, people seemed to have also discarded their treatment documents. “Covid history mentioning what type of infection it was, did O2 drop, pneumonia are helpful indicators for the treating doctor. But many patients say they have misplaced the records,” he said.
Some patients also try to hide their Covid history though it serves as reference for further evaluation. “They should not conceal the Covid history,” he added.
Pediatric intensivist Dr Vivek Charde said asthma and COPD patients need to be managed by increasing their dose of inhalers. “Air pollution, cold weather and viral infection worsen asthma,” he said.
Dr Abhishek Madhura, assistant professor at GMCH department of paeditrics, said problems get aggravated for COPD patients. “Condition of all the asthmatic patients, reporting now, was in control a week ago. Now, their doses have been increased. Air pollution is major reason affecting their health,” he said.