Leg amputation a complication of COVID

LOS ANGELES (AFP) — After he had spent nearly three weeks in an intensive care unit being treated for COVID-19, Broadway and TV actor Nick Cordero’s doctors were forced to amputate his right leg.

The 41-year-old’s blood flow had been impeded by a clot: yet another dangerous complication of the disease that has been bubbling up in frontline reports from China, Europe and the US.

To be sure, so-called “thrombotic events” occur for a variety of reasons among intensive care patients, but the rates among COVID-19 patients are far higher than would be otherwise expected.

“I have had 40-year-old in my ICU who have clots in their fingers that look like they’ll lose the finger, but there’s no other reason to lose the finger than the virus,” Shari Brosnahan, a critical care doctor at NYU Langone said.

One of these patients is suffering from a lack of blood flow to both feet and both hands, and she predicted an amputation may be necessary, or the blood vessels may get so damaged that an extremity could drop off by itself.

A recent paper from the Netherlands in the journal Thrombosis

Research found that 31 percent of 184 patients suffered thrombotic complications, a figure that the researchers called “remarkably high” — even if extreme consequences like amputation were rare.

What exactly is causing it? The reasons aren’t fully understood, but Brosnahan offered several possible explanations.

People with severe forms of COVID-19 often have underlying medical conditions like heart or lung disease — which are themselves linked to higher rates of clotting.

Next, being in intensive care makes a person likelier to develop a clot because they are staying still for so long. That’s why for example people are encouraged to stretch and move around on long-haul flights.

Meanwhile, Italian and British medical experts are investigating a possible link between the pandemic and clusters of severe inflammatory disease among infants with high fevers and swollen arteries.

In Britain, doctors have made similar observations, prompting Health Secretary Matt Hancock to tell a coronavirus news briefing on Monday that he was “very worried” and that medical authorities were looking at the issue closely.

In the United States, a leading pediatric society says it has yet to see something similar.