Doctors amputated actor’s leg. What’s the coronavirus link?
- Mysterious blood clots are Covid-19’s latest lethal surprise in some patients
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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 United States.
He remains in Los Angeles hospital hooked up to a breathing machine.
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-olds 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.