Cade Cunningham has collapsed lung; a doc explains what that means
WASHINGTON – The Detroit Pistons will be without their superstar for at least two weeks. Guard Cade Cunningham has suffered a left lung pneumothorax, more commonly known as a lung collapse. He exited the first quarter against the Washington Wizards on Tuesday, March 17, after a collision with rookie wing Tre Johnson and didn't return.
The team announced a two-week re-evaluation timeline on Thursday. The Free Press talked to Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonologist at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, about the nature of collapsed lungs for professional athletes, and what the recovery process entails.
Essentially, it's when air is escaping out of a hole in the lung and into the rest of the chest cavity. The pressure from the surrounding air collapses the lung. BREAKING: Pistons' Cade Cunningham has collapsed lung, out extended period "How you fix it just depends on the severity and what it’s causing, but often times what we do is we put a chest tube in, we remove the air, allows the lung to re-inflate because there’s no air pushing it down, and then we let the hole in the lung kind of seal itself," Galiatsatos said.
"If you’ve got a cut today from a scape and I throw a Band-Aid on you, your body will take care of healing it. So we don’t go in and fix the hole. We just let the lungs heal themselves.
We keep usually a chest tube in you so the air can leave and not stay there keeping the lung collapsed. " If the hole doesn't heal on its own, surgery typically follows after. "Other patients sometimes, the lung may not fully expand and so there, we may need to take them into surgery and put what’s called talc, or just material that can help keep the lungs stuck to the chest wall," he said.
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