Member-only story
COVID-19: Those Clots
By Nana Dadzie Ghansah
It is increasingly evident that COVID-19 leads to a hypercoagulable state (the tendency to form clots too easily) that is causing a high incidence of venous thromboembolism in those with the disease. This may be contributing immensely to the mortality brought on by the virus.
In some instances, a thromboembolic condition is the cause of the presenting symptom. It is even possible that pulmonary microembolism may be part of the reason for the progressive respiratory failure (as seen in the autopsy series from New Orleans).
Unfortunately, apart from anecdotal reports, there are not very many prospective studies (surprised?) that have looked at this phenomenon. The few available are retrospective.
Klok and his team looked at 184 patients in 3 Dutch hospitals. They looked at the outcomes of the following conditions in patients with COVID-19 in ICUs in these 3 hospitals: acute pulmonary embolism (PE), deep venous thrombosis (DVT), ischemic stroke, heart attacks, or systemic arterial embolism. All patients were receiving some form of prophylaxis against clotting up. A good 31% of the patients had a condition that was due to thrombosis. The most common thrombotic complication was PE and was seen in 25 patients.
