Coronavirus leads to blood clots and portrays as stroke to the sufferer. Here’s what the doctors say’s about the same

Till now we knew that the deadly novel coronavirus is associated with the respiratory illness but city doctors of Mumbai are dealing with such coronavirus infected patients who suffered from severe neurological complications and that does include brain stroke. Intensivist doctor at Fortis Hospital in Mulund, Dr. Rahul Pandit who is also a member of the Maharashtra task-force of COVID said that “At any given time, almost 30-40% patients with stroke admitted to my ICU have COVID.”

Now, this suffering tends to make it difficult and increases the terror of dealing with the virus. But the doctors need to know about the in-depth suffering of the virus with the motive to help the sufferers of the deadly virus. Dr. Hemant Deshmukh who is the dean of KEM Hospital said that the respective hospital has dealt with patients who have suffered from several blood vessel-related complications and “We have had COVID patients with stroke, gangrene, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and heart attack.”

Mumbai has witnessed to be one of the worst-hit cities among the others due to COVID 19. The city has reported nearly 7 thousand deaths and over 1.2 lakh suffering cases over the last 5 months. In such a havoc situation there wasn’t much time to deal about the study of the virus, its variety, and the complications to bring along at a city-wide level. Hence someone had to do it and neurologist Rajesh Benny and Dr. Rahul Pandit manage to compile details of seventy patients to put the effort n studying about the virus and stroke. Neurologist Benny said that “Most of these patients came to the hospital with the presentation of stroke and were not aware of their COVID status.” 

It has been around 8 months since the deadly virus has stepped its disastrous foot on the globe and from then doctors have been able to notice that novel coronavirus possesses a tendency of triggering clots in blood. The deadly virus causes small clots or microthrombi which tend to travel to the lung and clog the blood flow towards the pulmonary embolism or lung. This turns out to be dangerous as the clot can travel to the brain circulation and further lead to cause a stroke. “Among the Indians, there is an incidence of thrombosis (clotting) in the arterial segment in the form of stroke or peripheral event,” said Dr. Toraskar. He also said that “Coronavirus affects the endothelial lining inside blood vessels, leading to inflammation that results in bleeding.“

The western countries have noticed the connection between coronavirus and stroke among the young people and came to know that clotting is occurring in veins. But Dr. Rajesh Pandit said that “in India, we are noticing arterial stroke too. It is not only among people younger than 40 like in the West but even among older patients.”

Among all the painful and major symptoms of Coronavirus, the neurological complications are not being considered as a big subset among the other symptoms but according to the local doctors, this could be found in 25% to 30% patients. A doctor said that “The loss of smell and taste is also a neurological manifestation of COVID-19.”

It is advised by doctors all across the globe that the recovered patients should take blood thinners for fifteen days after being discharged. Dr. Rajesh shared one of his experiences that “We got a patient who developed a clot in his leg after discharge.”

The world needs to be prepared to fight back and uproots the nasty roots of the deadly virus. 

{Source: Times of India}