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It's not the flu. You may not want to read this, but you need to. [View all]
Last edited Wed Jul 8, 2020, 08:21 AM - Edit history (1)
Coronavirus autopsies: A story of 38 brains, 87 lungs and 42 hearts
What we’ve learned from the dead that could help the living
When pathologist Amy Rapkiewicz began the grim process of opening up the coronavirus dead to learn how their bodies went awry, she found damage to the lungs, kidneys and liver consistent with what doctors had reported for months.
... snip
Autopsies have long been a source of breakthroughs in understanding new diseases, from HIV/AIDS and Ebola to Lassa fever — and the medical community is counting on them to do the same for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. With a vaccine probably many months away in even the most optimistic scenarios, autopsies are becoming a critical source of information for research into possible treatments.
... snip
Microclots in lungs
One of the first American investigations to be made public, on April 10, was out of New Orleans. The patient was a 44-year-old man who had been treated at LSU Health. Richard Vander Heide remembers cutting the lung and discovering what were probably hundreds or thousands of microclots.
... snip
Heart cells
The next organ studied up close was the heart. One of the most frightening early reports about the coronavirus from China was that a significant percentage of hospitalized patients — up to 20 to 30 percent — appeared to have myocarditis that could lead to sudden death. The condition involves the thickening of the muscle of the heart so that it can no longer pump efficiently.
... snip
He said a couple of patients he performed autopsies on had gone into cardiac arrest in the hospital, but when he examined them, the primary damage was in the lungs — not the heart.
Brain grid
“If you have one blood clot in the brain, we see that all the time. But what we’re seeing is, some patients are having multiple strokes in blood vessels that are in two or even three different territories,” Fowkes said.
More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/01/coronavirus-autopsies-findings/
What we’ve learned from the dead that could help the living
When pathologist Amy Rapkiewicz began the grim process of opening up the coronavirus dead to learn how their bodies went awry, she found damage to the lungs, kidneys and liver consistent with what doctors had reported for months.
... snip
Autopsies have long been a source of breakthroughs in understanding new diseases, from HIV/AIDS and Ebola to Lassa fever — and the medical community is counting on them to do the same for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. With a vaccine probably many months away in even the most optimistic scenarios, autopsies are becoming a critical source of information for research into possible treatments.
... snip
Microclots in lungs
One of the first American investigations to be made public, on April 10, was out of New Orleans. The patient was a 44-year-old man who had been treated at LSU Health. Richard Vander Heide remembers cutting the lung and discovering what were probably hundreds or thousands of microclots.
... snip
Heart cells
The next organ studied up close was the heart. One of the most frightening early reports about the coronavirus from China was that a significant percentage of hospitalized patients — up to 20 to 30 percent — appeared to have myocarditis that could lead to sudden death. The condition involves the thickening of the muscle of the heart so that it can no longer pump efficiently.
... snip
He said a couple of patients he performed autopsies on had gone into cardiac arrest in the hospital, but when he examined them, the primary damage was in the lungs — not the heart.
Brain grid
“If you have one blood clot in the brain, we see that all the time. But what we’re seeing is, some patients are having multiple strokes in blood vessels that are in two or even three different territories,” Fowkes said.
More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/01/coronavirus-autopsies-findings/
The article is worth the click.
***Link not behind a paywall thanks to Niagara in post #15: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/coronavirus-autopsies-a-story-of-38-brains-87-lungs-and-42-hearts/ar-BB16dALn
52 replies
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