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Doctors say coronavirus patients suffer life-threatening drops of oxygen while in the emergency room that can lead to their death.
Dr. Richard Levitan, an emergency medicine practitioner at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, and has been teaching other medical professionals how to intubate and use ventilators for at least two decades.
But, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, he wrote that he saw an interesting phenomenon in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.
I was seeing patients who had lungs filled with fluid or pus, but did not struggle to breathe until the day they arrived at the hospital.
In fact, they had no idea they had the infection until they were in the emergency room, and by then, “they were often already in critical condition.”
This is because many suffered from hypoxia and can lead to low oxygen levels in the tissues, resulting in organ damage and, in some cases, death.
Dr. Richard Levitan, an emergency medicine practitioner, said he saw patients with COVID-19 pneumonia enter the hospital with low oxygen levels. Pictured: Coronavirus patients on a ventilator in the emergency room at St Joseph’s Hospital in Yonkers, New York, April 20
Doctors determined that patients suffer from hypoxia, which is when there are low levels of oxygen in the tissues that can lead to death. Pictured: A patient is transported by ambulance from the Freedom Square Seminole Nursing Ward in Seminole, Florida on April 17.
Levitan recommends that patients be monitored with a simple device called a pulse oximeter (pictured) that measures oxygen levels before the dive is too low.
Hypoxia is a form of oxygen deprivation caused by hypoxemia, which occurs when there are low levels of oxygen in the blood.
In the case of hypoxia, the body tissues begin to be low on oxygen, which can lead to infections and tissue damage.
A 2011 Massachusetts General Hospital study found that about seven percent of patients experience a ‘hypoxemic event’ and 3.5 percent had a ‘severe hypoxemic event’ lasting two minutes or more.
Hypoxia can happen without much warning, and without oxygen, your heart, liver, brain, and other organs can be damaged in minutes.
‘And this is what really surprised us: these patients reported no sensation of respiratory problems, even though their chest x-rays showed diffuse pneumonia and their oxygen was below normal. How could this be? ‘ Levitan wrote in The Times.
He explained that patients with COVID pneumonia cause so-called ‘silent hypoxia’, silent because it is not often detected until an advanced stage.
Pneumonia is a lung infection that occurs when the alveoli are filled with pus or fluid, and patients with it have pain and discomfort.
But coronavirus patients with pneumonia don’t feel the same difficulty breathing even though their oxygen levels are plummeting.
“And when they do, they have alarmingly low oxygen levels and moderate to severe pneumonia (as seen on chest x-rays),” Levitan wrote.
‘Normal oxygen saturation for most people at sea level is 94 to 100 percent; The COVID pneumonia patients I saw had oxygen saturations as low as 50 percent. ‘
In fact, many were ill for at least a week with fever, cough, and lethargy before entering the hospital.
So why is this happening? Levitan writes that COVID pneumonia causes the air sacs in the lungs to collapse, causing oxygen levels to drop.
However, patients can still exhale carbon dioxide, and because it does not accumulate as with normal pneumonia, patients do not experience difficulty breathing.
Patients breathe deeper and faster due to their low oxygen levels, but don’t even realize it. And these changed breaths further damage the lungs.
Due to a shortage of ventilators and the likelihood that one will not fall off once it is turned on, Levitan recommends that patients be monitored with a simple device called a pulse oximeter.
These are small devices that can be purchased at any pharmacy. They are hooked on a finger to measure oxygen levels in the blood.
Levitan says this home monitoring could alert patients to the need for treatment before their oxygen levels drop too dangerously low.
“Widespread pulse oximetry screening for Covid’s pneumonia, whether people check themselves on home devices or go to clinics or doctor’s offices, could provide an early warning system for the types of respiratory problems associated with Covid pneumonia, “he wrote in The Times.
