Media reports from the United States say doctors are dealing with blood clots – a dangerous new complication in some coronavirus patients with severe infections.
“You just watch it clot right in front of you,” said Dr Kathryn Hibbert, director of the medical intensive care unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, CNN reported.
Broadway star Nick Cordero, 41, lost his right leg as a result of blood clots as he fights the Covid-19 virus, the Washington Post reported. Blood thinners failed to stop the problem, forcing doctors to amputate.
Embolisms, heart attacks and other problems caused by blood clots have occurred with other patients, Business Insider reported.
Hibbert and other doctors are finding that some patients infected with the novel coronavirus have a propensity towards developing blood clots, which can be life threatening if the clot travels to the heart or lungs.
“The number of clotting problems I’m seeing in the ICU, all related to Covid-19, is unprecedented,” Dr. Jeffrey Laurence, a hematologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, wrote in an email to CNN. “Blood clotting problems appear to be widespread in severe Covid.”
Laurence and his colleagues looked at autopsies on two patients and found blood clots in the lungs and just beneath the surface of the skin, according to a study published last week. They also found blood clots beneath the skin’s surface on three living patients.
In the Netherlands, a study found “remarkably high” rates of clotting among Covid patients in the ICU.
An international consortium of experts from more than 30 hospitals gathered to consider the issue. Their conclusion: It’s unclear exactly why, but coronavirus patients may be predisposed to having clots.
“This is one of the most talked about questions in Covid right now,” said Dr. Michelle Gong, chief of the division of critical care medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.
