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“Happy hypoxia” in the infected surprises doctors
The coronavirus raises new questions for scientists about how it works in the human body, writes Czech information site Lidovky.cz.
Doctors are now recording cases of patients with extremely low oxygen levels, but who inexplicably explain why and how they communicate normally and look good. Doctors wonder that such a lack of oxygen usually causes unconsciousness or even death.
The usual values for blood oxygen saturation in healthy people is approximately 95%, but doctors in emergency rooms now find cases of patients with oxygen saturation by 70-80 percent, and some are even below 50%, according to The Guardian. Such a lack of oxygen in the body, which in medicine is called hypoxia, threatens vital organs such as the heart or brain. And generally at values of around 75% oxygen saturation there is loss of consciousness.
The invisibility of such a condition may be related to the way the body detects hypoxia. What causes people to breathe poorly is the record of increasing levels of carbon dioxide, which increase during hypoxia and which the body cannot effectively eliminate. And the specificity of COVID-19 patients seems to be that they don’t have this reaction, writes The Guardian.
The so-called “silent hypoxia” or “happy” phenomenon confuses doctors and raises additional questions about the exact effect of the virus on the body. For example, Dr. Jonathan Banard-Smith of Manchester Hospital sees this as an example of very abnormal physiology, whereas in other respiratory diseases that cause oxygen deficiency, patients generally appear to be very ill. “With pneumonia or pulmonary embolism, they won’t be able to talk to you in bed,” said Dr. Mike Charlesworth, an anesthesiologist at a Manchester hospital.
“We don’t know if this is causing organ damage.” We don’t understand if the body compensates, “Charlesworth said. He himself suffered from COVID-19 and stated that he probably suffered from hypoxia. He described that while in bed with a cough and fever, he was furious. He sent angry messages from his mobile phone. According to his wife, his lips darkened.In this state he went to the hospital.
An anesthesiologist testified about a case of a patient who entered the emergency department with the explanation that he had a cold. When her oxygen level was measured, the device showed only 30%. “Of course, we decided it was a mistake because patients generally have higher hypoxic cardiac arrest,” explains the anesthesiologist.
Pneumonia, which affects a person with a coronavirus infection, limits the supply of oxygen to the blood. Coronavirus cases have also been reported to cause blood clots, which may be responsible for some sudden deaths. But how exactly the virus causes these effects is still unclear, writes lidovky.cz.
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