HOUSTON – Trent Strickland, 28, said he felt pretty bad when he got COVID.
“Seven days we were symptomatic, and then it took another additional week just to get over the symptoms where we were able to do things normally,” Strickland explained that he didn’t do a lot of walking around while sick.
When his leg was swelling and tender, his wife knew it was a medical emergency.
“Anytime around the infection, you’re at risk of getting a blood clot,” Dr. Khaled Khalaf said.
Khalaf, Interventional Cardiologist from HCA Kingwood, said the combination of COVID inflammation and being sedentary can lead to deep vein thrombosis or a pulmonary embolism, which can be life-threatening. In many cases, blood thinners can help the clot to pass, but he ended up operating on Strickland because of the size of the clot.
“We have a way to get these clots out safely,” Khalaf said.
Khalaf uses a device called the ClotTriever to remove large clots.
“It’s a basket that essentially gets inserted inside the clot and then when we deploy it, we can see, it almost looks like a fishing net. And what it does is, it entraps the clot and then allows it to drag the clot out of the body through the sheath safely,” he said.
He said this can be done under moderate sedation, and unlike previous treatments, patients can go home the next day.
“I would say, don’t hesitate like I was, get in there and get everything checked out,” Strickland said.
Symptoms of a blood clot include:
- Pain
- Swelling
- Tenderness
- Redness
- The color may be murky
If you notice these symptoms, you need to get to the hospital.