Fountain of Youth or the Trojan Horse: A Case Report of Pulmonary Thromboembolism After Anticoagulant Administration in a COVID-19 Patient

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a serious challenge for health care systems, a challenge which requires taking effective and intensive measures to provide patient care. COVID-19 can cause damages to various organs, including heart, through causing various changes in the inflammatory and coagulation systems. Some cases of cardiac injury can display mistakable signs of myocardial infarction (MI). Cardiac injury can mimic acute conditions such as MI. Case Presentation: In this study, a case of a 33-year-old man with an initial diagnosis of MI by ST-elevation was investigated. He later developed pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) after being treated with fibrinolytic and anticoagulants; after further investigations, however, he was found not afflicted with primary MI. Our findings may have proven useful in demonstrating the unexpected effects of anticoagulants on COVID-19. Conclusion: Miss-diagnosing these cases as well as administrating effective treatment for COVID-19 patients may have posed real risks to the patients and made it difficult to manage them due to the high risk of death and the lack of differential diagnosis of the given patients.

Keywords

• covid-19
• pulmonary embolism
• acute myocardial infarction /stemi
• antithrombotic treatment