According to CNN Health’s latest report, the novel coronavirus can cause sudden strokes in adults. According to CNN Health, Dr. Thomas Oxley, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, gave details of the five people they treated. The report said that all the patients are below 50 years old and all of them had mild symptoms caused by the COVID-19 infection or had no health complications at all.
It was found that the novel coronavirus appears to be causing sudden strokes in adults in their 30s and 40s who are not otherwise terribly ill.
There’s growing evidence that Covid-19 infection can cause the blood to clot unnaturally, and stroke would be an expected consequence of that.
“All tested positive. Two of them delayed calling an ambulance,” Oxley said.
It is not common for people so young to have strokes, especially strokes in the large vessels in the brain.
“For comparison, our service, over the previous 12 months, has treated on average 0.73 patients every 2 weeks under the age of 50 years with large vessel stroke,” the team wrote in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. That’s fewer than two people a month.
A stroke in a large blood vessel causes severe damage if it is not removed right away. At least one patient has died and others are in rehabilitation facilities, intensive care or in the stroke unit. Only one went home but will require intense care, Oxley said.
Oxley said his team wanted to tell people to watch themselves for symptoms of coronavirus infection and to call 911 if they have any evidence of stroke. “Up until now, people have been advised to only call for an ambulance with shortness of breath or high fever,” he wrote.
The easy memory device for stroke, he said, is “FAST”: F for face drooping, A for arm weakness, S for speech difficulty and T for time to call 911.
“The most effective treatment for large vessel stroke is clot retrieval, but this must be performed within 6 hours, and sometimes within 24 hours,” Oxley wrote.
The doctor’s report will be published by the New England Journal of Medicine which states that 0.73 patients under the age of 50 years have been diagnosed with a large vessel stroke every 2 weeks for the past 12 months.
According to a previous report of CNN, there are three major reasons why COVID-19 patients are at high risk of having a stroke or blood clot: One of them is patients who are infected by COVID-19 already have underlying medical conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
The second one is the cytokine storm that causes the body’s immune system response to turn against itself. And the third reason will be the evolution of the coronavirus that abnormally causes the blood clots.
Dr. Behnood Bikdeli, one of the experts who coordinated with the international coalition of physicians, reiterated that this is an alarming medical phenomenon.
