With the pandemic taking all over the world since earlier this year, people must know how the COVID-19 virus affects an individual’s internal body system in general. However, it remains confusing how the virus influences the rest of the bodily organs other than it attacking the lungs area. It depends on either an individual’s immune system endurance or the disease inflicting more harm on its own. Several infections such as influenza got noted for similar organ failure results caused by the coronavirus.
UCSF cardiologist Dr. Nisha Park pointed out that this virus is the most different from all the respiratory infections that she and her colleagues have ever seen throughout the entire medical history. According to her, their understanding of the coronavirus’s pathology is still in its premature states. Due to the disease’s intriguing biological structure, however, Dr. Park and other medical health experts urge to conduct further examinations to understand more of its components and effects on the human body.
According to several conducted case studies, researchers have yet to prove if COVID-19 has anything to do with a patient’s organ damage outside the respiratory system. Millions of scientists and doctors around the world are currently inspecting thousands of cases related to the widespread epidemic to completely understand how the virus exactly affects a human being’s internal bodily systems and the reasons behind its extensive damage to the lung area. According to medical experts, treating seriously ill patients affected by the virus require additional comprehension of what happens once the virus invades the human bodily systems.
Kaiser Permanente infectious disease expert and vice president Dr. Stephen Parodi declared that the most important thing to safeguard from the coronavirus is to have a detailed and concrete method of protecting all bodily organs from the disease.
Here are several steps on how the coronavirus spread throughout a person’s entire body, including which bodily parts get affected the most by the virus:
Firstly, according to a research study done by China, at least 20% of COVID-19 patients hospitalized reported signs of heart damage. Several U.S. doctors revealed that most coronavirus patients first discover that they experience symptoms similar to a heart attack before they eventually find out that they got the virus. In most instances, patients didn’t suffer any heart attacks at all. However, they received damages in their heart muscles. Additionally, other people reported having suffered from severe heart attacks that eventually lead to their deaths.
Secondly, many COVID-19 patients complained of experiencing blood clots in their major arteries. One instance reported a Los Angeles patient’s leg getting amputated by doctors that resulted from blood clotting while he was severely sick. Blood vessels are where clots usually form, and they can separate and flow through other organs via bloodstreams. Clots could cause potential severe deaths or injuries if they suspend oxygen to get to vital organs and halt blood flow.
Thirdly, coronavirus patients suffering from the disease’s severe symptoms also report experiencing kidney damages. According to some U.S. hospitals, they complained about the lack of medical equipment because an overwhelming number of patients need dialysis as a treatment to protect their kidneys. However, doctors cautioned that understanding the causes behind kidney damages is one of the laborious procedures to do in the medical field, added to the fact that these organs’ susceptibility to all sorts of immune reactions and infections is high.
Fourthly, the virus reportedly affects an individual’s brain organ. According to multiple official medical records, many COVID-19 patients suffered from seizures and heart strokes. However, there is a possibility that the strokes correlate with that of the coronavirus’s clotting symptom. Moreover, some health professionals wonder if the virus directly affects the brain due to multiple patients having multiple confusion, seizures, and delirium episodes. A central nervous issue records that many patients lose their sense of smell when inflicted by the disease.