Arlene Packles had a violent cough. It didn’t sound quite human. It was like a seal’s bark or a car engine in trouble. And a round of coughing could last for an entire hour.
Packles’ illness began in 2020, just when the COVID-19 pandemic began its inexorable sweep across the country. A woman with a severe cough wasn’t unusual back then. The novel coronavirus—SARS-CoV-2—tended to push other respiratory conditions to the margins, at least at first. But there was another reason why it took a while for the 73-year-old from Bergen County, New Jersey, to find her way to a diagnosis.
Tracheobronchomalacia (TBM) is under-recognized by the pulmonary community, says Dr. Eugene Shostak, an Assistant Professor of Interventional Pulmonology who co-directs Weill Cornell’s TBM program with Dr. Oliver Chow, an Assistant Attending Cardiothoracic Surgeon and Assistant Professor of Clinical Cardiothoracic Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine.
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