Man goes into deep coma after contracting Covid, recovers in week

By Ashish Srivastava New Delhi, Dec 27 : Covid-19, in the early months of the pandemic, was considered as a disease affecting the lungs and circulatory system. However, with time, evidence has started to accumulate where it is found to be causing rare and unsuspected diseases in its patients. One such disease is Acute Hemorrhagic Leukoencephalitis (AHL), whose link to Covid has been reported in a few cases outside India and doctors have started calling it as Covid Encephalitis.
One such case was reported in Indraprastha Apollo Hospital where the patient suffered this disease after contracting the Covid-19.
A 55-year-old man, with co-morbidities, had contracted Covid-19 with mild symptoms and isolated himself at his home in Jammu.
“Being a diabetic and patient of hypertension, his condition started deteriorating within days. Blood oxygen saturation levels plummeted and he was admitted in a local hospital where doctors found his lungs infected with pneumonia. The patient was put on a ventilator. However, when his health did not improve, he was flown to Apollo via air ambulance,” said Dr Rajesh Chawla, Senior Consultant, Pulmonology & Respiratory Disease at Apollo told IANS.
The doctors here continued to keep him on the ventilator. Meanwhile, they administered him sedatives and muscle relaxants for appropriate ventilation. Chawla said that the condition of the patient’s lungs improved within a few days after which, he was removed from anaesthetic drugs.
However, the patient did not respond even after hours of removal from the sedatives, and was later discovered to have gone into a deep state of coma. The later investigation revealed that he had developed AHL in his brain, Dr Vinit Suri, Senior Consultant, Neurosciences at Apollo told IANS.