Doctor: COVID-19 puts pregnant women at greater risk
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Despite lower numbers of COVID-19, certain people are still at risk of dangerous conditions as a result of catching the disease.
Dr. Andrew Jameson is an infectious disease specialist at Mercy Health St. Mary’s Hospital. He explained that both COVID-19 and pregnancy can put a patient into a “hypercoagulable state.”
“Basically, more likely to clot… The worry is that when you combine both of them together, that’s kind of a supercoagulable state,” Jameson said.
He is not an OBGYN, so he doesn’t specifically treat pregnant women but does get requests from those doctors about COVID-19 management for their patients, including blood thinners.
The official recommendation from the guidelines, including the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, states there is not enough data to automatically recommend blood thinners for pregnant women who contract COVID-19 without any evidence of a clot.
“There are many patients who have told me that their OBGYNs have prescribed blood thinners,” Jameson said.
He said despite no formal recommendation, anyone who is pregnant and contracts COVID-19 should discuss the risk of blood clots with their doctor.
Once a person has recovered from COVID-19, Jameson says the risk goes back down. He also pointed out the hospital is now admitting patients for COVID-19-related issues sooner.
“We give the monoclonal antibody therapy and talk about other options,” he said. “We actually have a lower threshold to admit them to the hospital as well because we want to make sure the oxygenation level stays really high.”
He said the takeaway is even as COVID-19 makes the turn to become endemic, there are times when patients should take the disease just as seriously as when it was at its peak, and pregnancy is one of those times.
