César Fuquen Leal
Latin News Agency for Medicine and Public Health
As the medical literature has evidenced in recent months, he COVID-19 It could generate serious repercussions to the cardiovascular system of patients who get the virus.
The population that ends up hospitalized in intensive care units because of the new coronavirus would have an increased risk of multiple diseases such as heart attacks, clots and damage to the arterial system. This was evidenced by Dr. Héctor Martínez, cardiologist and president of the American College of Cardiology Capítulo de Puerto Rico in dialogue with the Journal of Medicine and Public Health (MSP).
“These manifestations of clots that can occur in the arterial or venous system and can also manifest as simulating myocardial infarction. This is nothing new. We have also seen it in other conditions associated with what is known as the famous multi-organ failure syndrome. It is when basically our system says: ‘enough is enough’ and begins to have an excessive dysregulation in terms of the part of coagulation versus the part of bleeding at all times”Cardiologist Martínez explained.
Are COVID patients at increased risk of clots?
“Another manifestation when a patient is critically ill is the clot and they cause heart attacks in the different important organs: infarcts in the brain, infarcts in the kidney, infarcts in the vessel, infarction even in the liver We have seen. They are manifestations of very critical acute conditions ”, warned the doctor.
When the patient is hospitalized and spends long hours lying down, experience with patients with COVID-19 has shown that the risk of blood clots is dramatically increased, which could trigger pulmonary embolisms, heart attacks and strokes.
“When we go to a balance of excess bleeding is when bleeding problems occur, which we have also seen because it has been documented that these patients with coronavirus can develop clots with greater propensity. Doctors have to be more aggressive in terms of the anticoagulation that is provided to these hospitalized patients. It is important to know that to this day the recommendation of the American Heart Academy and the American College of Cardiology is that these patients should be treated with heparin or with a low molecular weight heparin and none of the other novel anticoagulants as we know them are indicated. Perhaps in the future this could be an option, but at the moment only two are being used more for the coagulation prevention part of an anticoagulant event when a patient is hospitalized for a long time, such as these coronavirus patients, “he emphatically warned. Dr. Martínez.
Watch the full interview below.
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Increased chance of other conditions affecting the heart
According to Dr. Hector, when COVID-19 patients enter a critical state they can develop a ‘disseminated intravascular coagulopathy’, which translated into Spanish means disseminated intravascular coagulopathy.
“-Disseminated intravascular coagulopathy- manifests itself in laboratory studies with a low fibrinogen sample. But what has happened with coronavirus patients is that this fibrinogen is elevated, this is known as an acute reagent that rises with acute conditions, specifically sepsis or impact, this manifestation of fibrinogen and elements of inflammation such as CRPs that are very high. I suspect that it could be more a manifestation of the acute and possibly terminal illness that the coronavirus patient has. When we see this it is unfortunately, since the patient is acutely ill and there is almost minimal that we can provide. I can tell you that the patients that I have seen in my hospital with coronavirus have not yet seen a patient that develops all these manifestations of arterial and venous thrombosis at the same time. If we have seen them manifested, but not to such a degree as it is in the literature, ”the doctor explained.
Cardiac care exhortation
“We Puerto Ricans, like the Americans, love to say: ‘Doctor, give me a pill so that all ills can be cured. Doctor, give me a stent or we will operate, because I want all the ills to go away. ‘ Unfortunately, this is not how oriental medicine works, it tends to focus more on the prevention part, which is what I would love for us to do here in Puerto Rico. Patients eat whatever they want, smoke, drink alcohol and all this, like being overweight, causes the famous sleep apnea, that is what causes a very serious problem of lack of oxygenation to the heart and can also cause homeopathy, weak heart, “said the specialist.
The doctor warned that for fear of COVID many patients with serious cardiovascular diseases have stopped going to hospital centers, a situation that puts their health at great risk and causes a serious decline in the disease.
“We will be responsible. We are going to tell the patient that he needs to go to the hospital, we need him to go because we have tools, we have the necessary treatments and diagnoses to help him. Now, a patient who has chronic pulmonary disease, diabetic patient, high pressure, with coronary heart disease, weak hearts, peripheral arterial diseases such as stroke in the past, patients who have had uncontrolled pressures have needed recurring hospitalizations, asthmatic patients who have had pneumonia in the past, it is the patients who are richer to possibly develop a more dangerous coronavirus syndrome than some than most patients who have developed coronavirus syndrome who are to some degree asymptomatic“Urged Dr. Héctor Martínez in dialogue with MSP.
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