Today, the staff at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center and Children’s Hospital of New Jersey discharged a 12-year-old girl who almost lost her life to a blood clot, that may have been caused by COVID-19.
https://youtu.be/cgxP-7BEW-8
Hospital officials said she will be returning to the hospital every day for therapy on her leg if you are interested in meeting and speaking with her family and physicians.
The child, whose name is Jissel, tested negative multiple times for COVID-19 but today her antibody test came back positive.
While doctors cannot say that the virus caused her condition, it does appear that COVID-19 is causing blood clotting issues in the patient's official said.
On April 21st, Jissel came to the hospital with a left leg that was incredibly swollen and blue. She had an extremely large venous clot in her leg that could’ve broken at any time and caused cardiac arrest.
In fact, that is exactly what happened on that Tuesday afternoon at 5 p.m. in the pediatric catheterization lab at Newark Beth Israel, Jissel coded officials said in a statement.
While doctors were attempting to remove the clot from her leg it went into her lungs and caused her heart to stop.
Officials said the team went into action and performed CPR for nearly an hour before putting her on ECMO (a heart and lung bypass machine) to keep her alive.
For three days, the ECMO machine kept Jissel alive while her team of pediatric and adult cardiologists, vascular surgeons, pediatric intensive care specialists, wound care physicians, anesthesiologists, nurses, and respiratory therapists, worked together to make sure Jissel would make it back home.
Hospital officials said they used ultrasound technology to inject clot-busting medication (TPA) directly into the clot.
”It worked, her heart began to take over the work of the machine and in three days her heart was working on its own” officials said.
Still, doctors were unclear of the impact the ECMO would have on her brain, but Jissel appeared to recover overnight, talking and laughing.