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PHOTO: Reuters
Doctors say coronavirus patients suffer from a lack of a few drops of oxygen while in the emergency room, which can lead to their death.
Dr. Richard Levitan, an emergency room physician at Bellevue Hospital in New York, has been teaching other doctors how to intubate patients for at least two decades.
For The New York Times, it describes an interesting phenomenon in COVID-19 patients with pneumonia. “I saw patients with lungs filled with fluid or pus, but they had no respiratory problems,” he writes. He said this is because many suffer from hypoxia, which can lead to low oxygen levels in the tissues and consequently organ damage and, in some cases, death.
Hypoxia is a form of oxygen deprivation caused by hypoxemia, which occurs at low levels of oxygen in the blood. In the case of hypoxia, the body tissues begin to reduce oxygen, which can lead to infections and tissue damage.
A 2011 study at Massachusetts General Hospital found that approximately 7% of patients experienced a “hypoxemic event” and 3.5% had a “severe hypoxemic event” that lasted 2 minutes or more.
Hypoxia can occur without warning and without oxygen, the heart, liver, brain, and other organs can be damaged in minutes.
“And this is what really surprises us: These patients do not report a feeling of respiratory problems, although the chest x-ray shows diffuse pneumonia and their oxygen levels are below normal.” How is that possible? Levitan rhetorically asked in The Times.
He explains that patients with COVID pneumonia cause “silent hypoxia,” silent because it often goes undetected at the advanced stage.
Pneumonia is a lung infection that occurs when the alveoli are filled with pus or fluid, and patients with it experience pain and discomfort.
But coronavirus patients with pneumonia do not feel the same difficulty breathing, even though oxygen levels decrease. “And by the time they do, they have worryingly low oxygen levels and moderate to severe pneumonia,” Levitan wrote.
“The normal oxygen saturation for most people at sea level is 94 to 100 percent. The patients with COVID pneumonia, whom I saw, had an oxygen saturation of up to 50 percent.” In fact, many had been ill for at least a week with fever, cough and lethargy before entering the hospital, “continues the doctor. Why is this happening? She explains that COVID pneumonia causes the air sacs in the lungs to shrink , which causes oxygen levels to drop, however, patients can still breathe out carbon dioxide, and since 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 are not even aware of it. And these altered breaths are damaging the lungs, Levitan is adamant.
Due to a lack of ventilators and the likelihood that they will not go up after bed, Levitan recommends that patients be monitored with a heart rate monitor. These are small devices that can be purchased at any pharmacy. They are sealed with the fingers to measure oxygen levels in the blood.
Levitan says this home monitoring can alert patients to treatment needs before oxygen levels drop too dangerously low.
“Covid’s widespread lung oximetry screening for pneumonia, whether people are examined at home or going to clinics or doctor’s offices, can provide an early warning system for the types of respiratory problems associated with pneumonia from Covid, “he wrote in The Times
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