A paper appeared yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine, adding to the growing body of evidence that clotting is a prominent feature in Covid-19, even if it isn’t always evident. People who develop difficulty breathing with influenza (“the flu”) or more run-of-the-mill pneumonias may look at first like they have similar shortness of breath to those with Covid-19, but this particular study details autopsy results of careful examination of the lungs in patients who have died from Covid-19 versus patients who have succumbed to influenza. The article can be accessed by clicking here.
For those without medical or scientific backgrounds, articles in The New England Journal can be difficult to decipher because of the medical terminology. However, it is worth translating for the public.
Perhaps the two sentences in the abstract (the brief summary of the study presented at the beginning of the paper to gain an overview) that stand out the most to me are: “Histologic analysis of pulmonary vessels in patients with Covid-19 showed widespread thrombosis with microangiopathy. Alveolar capillary microthrombi were 9 times as prevalent in patients with Covid-19 as in patients with influenza.”
Translation: The lungs of the patients who died secondary to Covid-19 had wide-spread clotting, nine times more blood clots and blockages in the thousands of small capillaries and blood vessels in their lungs, compared with the lungs of patients who died from influenza.
This could be why patients with Covid-19 go from talking to their healthcare providers in emergency departments to abruptly dying, and why so many who are on mechanical ventilators still don’t do well. It’s difficult to ventilate lungs that are full of blood clots. How can oxygen and carbon dioxide pass across the walls of blood vessels if these blood vessels are solidly, unabashedly blocked and blood is not flowing?
We have heard reports about young people with Covid-19 showing up with strokes. Reports of blood clots in arms/legs/fingers/toes are becoming more prevalent. This recent study confirms evidence at the cellular level that clotting is a feature of Covid-19.