Corona patients do not notice oxygen deficiency – Wel.nl

There are corona patients who don’t feel so sick at all, but still have oxygen levels that would normally make you unconscious. It is a mystery to doctors.

The phenomenon also referred to as “happy hypoxia” raises the question of exactly how the virus attacks the lungs. “It is remarkable how many people are absorbed with very low oxygen levels, while they are not aware of it,” thus Dr Jonathan Bannard-Smith of Manchester Royal Infirmary in The Guardian. “We don’t see this with flu or pneumonia. It is much more serious and it makes clear that a very strange physiology is happening before our eyes. ”

Dr. Mike Charlesworth, anesthesiologist at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, says that with normal lung disease, patients with such a severe oxygen deficiency become very ill. “With pneumonia or embolism, people don’t sit up in bed to talk to you. We don’t understand. We also do not know whether it causes organ damage that we cannot yet determine whether that compensates for the body. ”

Normally, an oxygen deficiency poses a great risk to the heart, brain and other vital organs. Usually, patients lose consciousness at an oxygen level of less than 75 percent. The breathlessness arises because the body notices that the CO2 level increases, because the lungs are unable to eliminate the CO2.

In some corona patients, this reaction does not occur, keeping them relatively fit, while the oxygen level in the blood is far too low. That actually defies the laws of biology. “I don’t think any of us expect what we see to be explained by the known processes,” said Bannard-Smith.

It is something many doctors notice: at first, corona patients do not look so bad at all until their situation suddenly deteriorates rapidly.

Sources): The Guardian