31-yr-old COVID-19 patient survives heart surgery after virus clogged arteries

New Delhi: A 31-year-old COVID-19 positive patient has been successfully operated upon for a clogged artery, caused by the virus, in an intensive heart surgery. Significantly, the patient had no prior history of a heart condition and was brought to the hospital with chest pain, which turned out to be a massive heart attack.

Sagar Gupta, who is now healthy and recuperating, had no blood pressure issues and neither did he have diabetes. "I was already positive and was under home isolation. 10 days after I first developed a fever and then other symptoms, I had a chest pain, but my family said it could be gas-related," he said.

However, he consulted his doctor, who immediately asked him to visit the hospital. "When I reached the hospital, initial tests revealed I was having a massive heart attack. I have no health problem which is why we were not aware. The doctors told me that due to coronavirus I had developed a clot," he added.

Doctors at Fortis Hospital, who treated the patient said that Gupta was saved due to timely intervention. The patient's arteries were 100 per cent blocked even though he did not have any prior cardiac issues and had lived a very healthy life. The pain in his chest rose abruptly and he was rushed to Fortis Hospital Shalimar Bagh.

"We are seeing such cases quite often. He had no diabetes, was a non-smoker and teetotaller and doing regular exercise. He told us that he had fever seven days back with smell and taste sensation gone. Sunday morning he landed up with a massive heart attack. He had pain for just one hour, but he reached the hospital, where we rushed him to the emergency room. We took RT-PCR test where he was tested positive. His heart rate was very high, almost 300 per minute. CPR was started, then we noticed that the left artery, which supplies almost 50 percent of the heart, was almost totally uprooted," Dr Manish Gunjan (Additional Director – FHSB, Interventional Cardiology) told Millennium Post.

He added that the novel Coronavirus had reached a stage where it was causing clots everywhere in the body.

The surgery, which was successful, saw Gupta recover fast. "We did follow-ups and observed his physical activity. His heart function was at 20 per cent when I was doing the surgery. His heart function is now normal when I visited him on the seventh day," he added.

Dr Gunjan emphasised that the reason Gupta was saved was that he reached the hospital on time. "The result was excellent and the reason for that was that he came within one hour to us. Time is muscle in this situation. The early you come to the hospital, the better it is," he added.