Blood Clots Are Killing Coronavirus Patients: The Question Is Why

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A pattern of blood clots in new coronavirus patients is spreading alarm among doctors and mystifying researchers across the country. Doctors describe patients with blood clots in their legs despite being on blood thinner. Autopsies reveal lungs filled with tiny clots. As the Washington Post reports Wednesday, doctors say they're confronting "bizarre, unsettling cases that don’t seem to follow the textbooks they’ve trained on."

The pattern has become too significant — and scary — to ignore. Coronavirus and its disease, COVID-19, attack the lungs, but these blood clots are appearing where they shouldn't be. In the report, Lewis Kaplan, a University of Pennsylvania physician and head of the American Society of Critical Care Medicine, said that coronavirus patients are clotting even more than cancer patients or those suffering from severe trauma.

"The problem we are having is that while we understand that there is a clot, we don’t yet understand why there is a clot," Kaplan told the Washington Post. "We don’t know. And therefore, we are scared."

While the mystery persists, some medical centers are now prescribing every COVID-19 patient small doses of blood thinners.

To know more about the pattern of blood clots in coronavirus patients, and the ongoing research into the mystery, read the full story at The Washington Post.