PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Doctors are finding that many patients with COVID-19 are developing blood clots, though they still don’t know why.
According to Dr. Ibrahim Moussa, an interventional cardiologist at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, clots are often broken up with blood thinners, but that takes time and requires a longer hospitalization.
“Based on the location of that clot, we go in with a catheter, then we put negative aspiration or suction on it, and that elongates the clot,” Moussa said. “We're able to extract it effectively out of the lungs and out of the body.”
The device, called FlowTriever, is the first FDA-approved device of its kind designed to treat blood clots in the lungs.
“It plugs up the circulation and when the circulation is plugged up, there's no forward flow of blood, and it's catastrophic,” he said. “The patient can present with onset shortness of breath, a sense of doom, feeling faint, or sometimes cardiac arrest and death.”
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