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The patient's system, riddled with inflammation -- increasingly a pattern among patients with COVID-19 -- in such a heightened state may have been doing more harm than good because inflammation -- a defensive mechanism in the body -- can increase clotting.
The body's response creates a domino effect that may cause further harm, doctors told ABC News. Patients' systems are strained by numerous factors triggered by the virus -- stressed lungs, severe inflammation -- that set in motion the clotting effect.
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It's growing so common with severe COVID cases, doctors are recognizing it as a new pattern of clotting called COVID-19-associated coagulopathy, or CAC, which is notably associated with high inflammatory markers in the blood, like D-dimer and fibrinogen.
"This virus is affecting the lungs, but it appears to be causing inflammation of the whole body," Dr. Viren Kaul, a pulmonary critical care specialist at Crouse Health and an assistant professor of medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University, told ABC News. With those patients at a higher risk of clotting, doctors must identify those individuals a quickly as possible.
In Spain, among the hardest-hit nations, clotting cases have become so prevalent in novel coronavirus patients that doctors have begun routinely treating individuals with therapeutic doses of anticoagulation medication.
"In the beginning of the outbreak, we started only giving them medicine to prevent clots. We saw that it wasn't enough," Dr. Cristina Abad, an anesthesiologist at Hospital Clínicos San Carlos in Madrid, told ABC News. "They started having pulmonary embolisms, so we started [full] anticoagulation on everyone."
Nearly half of the COVID-19 deaths in Spain have been in Madrid.