Peking University People’s Hospital shares COVID-19 treatment experience with Brazil
Peking: As the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc around the globe, Brazil is seeing an overwhelming spike as the country reported over 291,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Thursday, overtaking the UK to become the third-most in global infections.
In the latest episode of CGTN’s “COVID-19 Frontline” livestream, which was held on Wednesday, May 20, CGTN invited three veteran experts from Peking University People’s Hospital who specialize in pulmonary and critical care medicine, infectious disease, and intensive care medicine, to exchange treatment experience with Brazilian peers.
Li Yang, consul general of the Chinese Consulate-General in Rio de Janeiro, also joined the online meeting and sent his greetings through the program. “Stay together, work together, hand in hand, to fight against this deadly virus, and I believe this video conference is part of our joint efforts. We firmly believe that eventually we will defeat this common enemy of the entire mankind,” he said.
Treatment for COVID-19 patients with cardio-cerebrovascular complications
Ricardo Lima, chief of the Intensive Care Unit and head of the COVID-19 Project at Hospital Samaritano, said he had seen many cardio-cerebrovascular complications in Brazilian COVID-19 patients, so he would like to know the treatment experience of Chinese doctors.
Zhu Fengxue, deputy director of Department of Critical Care Medicine, Peking University People’s Hospital, said the mechanics behind these heart injuries are not clear currently, but it might be related to ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) receptors. It also might be triggered by an inflammatory response or drugs. For this group of patients, the alleviated level of myocardial enzymes can be noticed. In terms of clinical therapies, there is no particular treatment for this kind of complication. Doctors can only try to eliminate the triggers by not aggravating the damage to the heart. There is no special therapy. The mortality rate in this group of patients is very high.