The University of Kansas Health System is treating a total of 34 COVID patients today. Other significant numbers:
- 20 with the active virus today, 21 yesterday
- 2 in ICU, same as yesterday
- 1 on a ventilator, 2 yesterday
- 14 hospitalized, but out of acute infection phase, same as yesterday
Key points from today’s guests:
Amy Lewis, mother, AVM patient
- Had a brain bleed that resulted in the need to put her in a coma before delivering her baby
- She had a rare condition called Brain Arterio-Venous Malformation (AVM)
- Doctors are optimistic about using radiation treatment and she and the baby are both doing very well.
- It is important to not ignore symptoms. If it's something that you think you might have, then go straight to the hospital.
- Speak up. Say something. Ask questions.
Dr. Brian Milligan, neurosurgeon, The University of Kansas Health System
- When he first evaluated Amy, he knew this was a serious condition and the cross-functional team worked quickly to stabilize her.
- Her condition was an abnormal connection between an artery and a vein with no intervening capillaries. And without those capillaries, the high pressure blood just zips across into the veins that are really only designed to handle low pressure. Think about a rogue plumber entering your backyard in the night and connecting a pipe between your water main and your sewer and eventually over time that high pressure water causes the sewer to back up and then somewhere in the house a toilet overflows or a sink backs up -- that's really what an AVM hemorrhage amounts to most of the time.
- At 31 weeks, Amy was just getting into the third trimester and it's really not a time to try to put mom and baby through an anesthetic -- even if we were going to consider surgery.
- It's really a time where we want to just support both of them and get to a point where the OBGYN and ultimately the neonatal intensive care unit pediatricians are going to be happy with how far along the baby’s development is.
- We supported her through those first days until we got to a point where the OB GYN team and Amy and her husband Nathan made the decision to deliver the baby via C-section at 34 weeks.
- Since we treated Amy's AVM with highly focused radiation, we actually took the tangle and divided it into two geographic portions. The radiation helps the process of thickening the blood vessel wall that causes the blood flow to then stop going through the AVM.
- Seeing her recover and seeing the family doing so well is fantastic.
Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control, The University of Kansas Health System
- With a recent study linking more severe RSV with greater damage to the cells that are lining the nose, it means we're looking here at maybe a prognostic factor.
- I think this is a good early study, but certainly more data needs to be collected as far as the clinical utility of this.
- A national study is finding that long COVID is affecting women more than men. In many of the long COVID studies that we have seen, there has been a trend more toward female patients having experienced more of the long COVID. There needs to be more research as to why.
Friday, November 11 at 8:00 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. Some employees surprise their co-workers by bringing in donuts or bagels. One employee (a member of our Morning Medical Update team) surprised his co-worker by announcing he is donating a kidney to him. You’ll see the emotional moment when he revealed his stunning gift.
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