Doctors reported on April 22 that the coronavirus seems to be causing sudden strokes in adults who are in their 30s and 40s who are not otherwise terribly ill.
The doctors said that the patients may be unwilling to call 911 because they have heard on the news that hospitals are already overwhelmed with coronavirus cases.
There is also growing evidence that COVID-19 infection can cause the blood to clot in unusual ways, and stroke is one of the consequences of blood clots.
Stroke and COVID-19
According to Dr. Thomas Oxley, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, the virus causes increased clotting in the large arteries, thus leading to severe stroke. Dr. Oxley and his colleagues gave details of five people that they treated, all of them were under the age of 50 and all had either mild symptoms of COVID-19 infection or they showed no symptoms at all.
Dr. Oxley added that their report shows a seven-fold increase in the incidence of a sudden stroke in young patients during the past two weeks. Most of the patients have no past medical history and they were at home with either mild symptoms of COVID-19 or no symptoms of the virus at all. All five people that they treated tested positive of the virus and two of them delayed calling an ambulance.
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People are reluctant to call for help
Dr. Oxley is not the only one who expressed his concern about the increasing number of people who are reluctant to call 911 for emergencies. Other doctors have also reported that people are reluctant to call 911 or eve to go to emergency rooms because of the coronavirus pandemic. It is not common for people in their 30s and 40s to have strokes, especially strokes in the large vessels in the brain.
A team of health experts wrote in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine. They stated that for comparison, their service, over the previous year, has tested on average 0.73 patients every 2 weeks under the age of 50 years old with large vessel stroke. That is fewer than two people in a month.
According to Dr. Oxley, if the stroke in a large blood vessel is not removed immediately, it can cause severe damage. Out of the five patients that he treated, one patient has died, the others are in rehabilitation facilities, intensive care, or in the stroke unit. Only one of them went home but will still require intense care.
The average person who has a large vessel stroke is severely impaired, so it means there will be a bigger clot. It includes one of the largest arteries in the brain. Brain cells die when blood flow is stopped and the longer it is blocked, the wider the damage in the brain. It is important to have quick treatment such as clot retrieval and it must be performed within 6 hours, and sometimes within 24 hours.
Dr. Oxley advises the public to watch themselves for symptoms of coronavirus infection and to call 911 if they have any evidence of stroke. The easy memory device for stroke is FAST, which means F for face drooping, A for arm weakness, S for speech difficulty, and T for time to call 911.
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