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As doctors learn more about what makes COVID-19 so serious for some patients, they discover a mysterious and potentially deadly complication of the disease: blood clots.
Many doctors have reported seeing an alarming number of COVID-19 patients with blood clots, blood clusters in the form of gel that can cause serious problems, such as heart attack and race, according to press reports.
“The amount of clotting problems I see in the ICU [intensive care unit], all related to COVID-19, is unprecedented, “Dr. Jeffrey Laurence, hematologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, he told CNN.
Coronavirus science and news
Some doctors began to notice that their COVID-19 patients developed clots in their legs, even while taking blood thinners, according to The Washington Post. Others reported problems with dialysis machines for patients with COVID-19, because clots in the patients’ blood would clog the tube of the machine, according to CNN.
Additionally, some COVID-19 autopsies have found small blood clots in the lungs, the Post reported.
Reports are also emerging of relatively young people in their 30s and 40s who suffer strokes after becoming infected with the new coronavirus, according to CNN. Strokes are known to often be caused by transfer clots that are released and travel to the vessels in the brain.
According to CNN, the link between COVID-19 and clots has led some hospitals to put all COVID-19 patients on low-dose anticoagulants to prevent clots.
It’s not uncommon for ICU patients to experience blood clots, but the level of coagulation with COVID-19 seems out of the ordinary, CNN reported. A recent study from the Netherlands, published in the journal. Thrombosis investigation, found that of 184 patients with COVID-19 in the ICU, more than 30% experienced some type of coagulation problem. This number is “alarming,” Dr. Behnood Bikdeli, a fellow in cardiovascular medicine at Irving Medical Center at Columbia University, told CNN.
Since COVID-19 is a respiratory disease, doctors expected the most serious effects to be in the lungs, not in the blood. It is still unclear why COVID-19 patients are experiencing these clots.
Clots could be the result of hyperactivity. immune system, which leads to an imbalance in “clotting factors” that can cause clotting or bleeding, the Post reported.
But doctors point out that many patients with COVID-19 in the ICU also have other risk factors for blood clots, such as diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, according to CNN.
Doctors say there is an urgent need to study this problem and whether anticoagulants can help COVID-19 patients, CNN reported.
Originally published in Living science.
