Thrombosis, or blood clot, which can cause loss of limbs or failure of other organs, is increasingly being observed among COVID-19 patients, said S. Saravanan, vascular surgeon and director, Institute of Kidney Diseases, Urology and Organ Transplantation, Madras Medical Mission Hospital.
He said that while such COVID-19-induced thrombosis and the consequent loss of limbs were being widely reported in countries like the U.S., it had not received much attention in India so far.
Stressing the need for caution even if the patients remained asymptomatic and even after recovery, he said numbness, pain or inability to move the limbs must receive immediate medical attention.
Citing two cases he handled in which the patients had numbness and pain in a leg and an arm respectively, Dr. Saravanan said the thrombosis observed among COVID-19 patients was starkly different from the thrombosis observed normally.
“Thrombolysis [the removal of clots through medicines] would not have worked in these cases. We had to do thrombectomy (a surgical procedure), and even then it was difficult. The thrombus burden was high and hard in consistency,” he said.
He said the limbs could be salvaged in both cases, but further delay on the part of the patients in getting medical attention would have made it difficult. “With body pain being a commonly reported symptom of COVID-19, it is possible for people and even doctors to mistake thrombosis for such pain. If there is numbness or pain in the limbs, pulse in that particular limb must be checked. Doctors can also check if it feels cold. They should be referred to a vascular surgeon immediately,” he said. The possibility of salvaging the limbs would be higher if the patients got the right medical attention within a few hours.
Apart from the limbs, blood clots could affect other organs, he said. For instance, severe abdominal pain might indicate thrombosis in blood vessels leading to intestines. he said that while there was still no conclusive proof of why and how COVID-19 resulted in thrombosis, one of the possible reasons being agreed upon was the cytokine storm caused by the body’s immune response.
