(Image source from: webmd.com)
Not just lungs, COVID-19 can affect almost all organs and the initial symptoms can be completely unrelated to chest complaints.
AIIMS doctors from Delhi stressed that the classification of coronavirus cases into mild, moderate and high based just on respiratory problems must be relooked to include other organ involvement too.
Experts from the institute including Dr. Randeep Gularia, Dr. MV Padma Shrivastava, head of neurology and Dr. Ambuj Roy, head of cardiology during their weekly national clinical grand rounds which are organized in collaboration with NITI Aayog discussed various possibilities of extra pulmonary complications of COVID-19.
They said that 8 months into the COVID-19 they had learned that coronavirus is adapting from time to time and their strategies to treat the virus are also changing.
They mentioned that though people think that pneumonia only affects lungs it has a lot to do with other organs too.
As the doctors have researched more about the coronavirus, they came to know that the virus can cause many extra pulmonary manifestations.
This is basically of the fact that the coronavirus enters into the cells of the body through ACE2 receptors which altogether are present abundantly in upper airways and lungs. However, it is to be noted that these receptors are present in other parts of the body too thus affecting more organs.
The doctors say that though the pulmonary manifestations continue to dominate in the case of COVID-19, there is a significant number of patients would are presenting manifestations other than the pulmonary ones.
Hence the doctors are being very careful about what the patients are reporting about and are isolating and treating them carefully.
The experts in the program presented a number of cases in which the patients were labeled as asymptomatic and mild symptomatic, but had serious life threatening pulmonary manifestations like heart stroke and heart blocks.
The expert doctors further emphasized that those patients who report some other organ problems or different symptoms than the usual coronavirus symtoms must be treated according to the mentioned problem and not like the normal COVID-19 patient.
A doctor from the medicine department at AIIMS also highlighted a case of a 35 year old man who had headache and was vomiting but was found to have life threatening vein thrombosis.
When the doctors tested this man, he was found positive for COVID-19. In some patients, the brain is involved and is leading to clotting and or stroke and can even cause infection and lead to encephalitis or other complications that have nothing to do with lungs.
Another doctor’s team from AIIMS came up with a rare case where the patient had very low pulse rate and detected as COVID-19 positive and required initial support with some medications to improve heart rate.
By Gayatri Yellayi
