I was seeing one of my patients in the pulmonaryclinic and she was asking me about my thoughts about getting the covid vaccine. She also asked if I heard about the doctor in Florida who died after getting the first Pfizer vaccination. So this is something I want to talk about, so there was an obstetrician gynecologist in Miami who received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on December 18th of 2020 and shortly after receiving the vaccine, he reportedly developed acute immune thrombocytopeniahe died 16 days after getting the vaccine his cause of death being a result of brain hemorrhage or bleeding into the brain. Obviouslythis is horrible, it’s tragic and you have to feel for his family, but it makes youwonder was his death. A result of the vaccine and, if it was a result of the vaccine, should that change your perspective on getting the vaccine.
I’m going to tell you my thoughts on this but first. Let’s learn a little bit more about what happened. Pfizer is actively investigating the case but They don’t seem to think that the vaccine is the cause of this. So far, over 10 million people in the united states have received at least one shot of, either the Pfizer or the Moderna covid vaccine. These are the two authorized in the United States.
As of right now, I received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine which overall went very smoothly. Now, so far there have been about 40 cases of anaphylaxisas a result of these vaccines, meaning a severe allergic reaction, none of which were reportedas being fatal. Now many people have had other side effects that are very common after the vaccine like having a sore arm having some fatigue headache or fever, and this typically lasts a dayor two. The miami-dade county, medical examiner’s office, is investigating this death as well and as of right. Now there is no official autopsy report, but based off the reports.
Let’s see what we can make of this case, so this man was healthy he did not smoke. He did not take any medications and never had any reaction to any medication or vaccines, supposedly three days after he gets the first dose of the Pfizer covid vaccination he gets tiny reddish spots or petechiae caused by bleeding under the skin of his hands and feet this prompted him to go to the ER. He gets bloodwork done and his platelet levels are low and this is. Something called thrombocytopenia. Platelets are one of the components of blood clotting if platelets are too low.
It makes people more prone to bleeding normal platelet counts, range from anywhere from 150,000 to 400,000 or so people can have spontaneous bleeding including internal bleeding, but that doesn’t typically happen unless the platelet levels are less than ten thousand. His levels were reportedly zero and because they’re so low or absent really he gets admitted to the intensive care unit for two weeks doctors tried to get his platelet count higher, as he had experts from all over the country involved. In his care now presumably they tried a number of different treatments typically. We give platelet transfusions, which Isreally a blood product that we’re transfusing but also.
We give steroids specifically glucocorticoids such as Salimetrol or Methylprednisolone. If that doesn’t work, we try other drugs like Ramiplostimor Eltrombopag, to try to stimulate the bone marrow to make more platelets. Sometimes we give immunoglobulins. Sometimes we give a drug called Rituximab, which is a monoclonal antibody if else fails.
The last resort is to take out the spleen because sometimes a spleen plays a role in sequestering and destroying platelets so they were actually planning on doing a splenectomy, meaning removing his spleen but shortly before that he ends up developing a hemorrhagic stroke that took his life in a matter of minutes. In other words, he bled into his brain now just because someone bleeds into their brain it doesn’t necessarily mean that they die but what happens is if the bleeding is severe. Enough the pressure starts building up inside the skull and this is known as raised intracranial pressure and, this compresses, the brain and eventually the pressure forces the brain down through the base of, the skull that big hole at the bottom of the skull known as the foramen magnum. When this happens the only life-saving option – is emergency brain surgery, where a neurosurgeon does acraniotomy to relieve the intracranial pressure but his bleeding was so severe and happened so quickly it took his life and his thrombocytopenia was not only severe, but it wasn’t getting better despite all the treatments that they tried. This leads to the question: why does a healthy guy all of a sudden get severe thrombocytopeniato the point of bleeding to death because no matter, what the cause, this kind of thing is incredibly rare. I’ve, never had a similar case like it in the intensive care unit. Now there are some cases very much like this reported with certain drugs medications can lead to thrombocytopenia as a result of drug-induced antibodies being made by the immune system that end up attacking the body’s platelets so drug-induced thrombocytopenia refers to acute immune-mediated thrombocytopenia and it should be suspected when someone has a sudden severe thrombocytopenia, so ditp or drug-inducedthrombocytopenia is even more strongly suspected when. A patient has repeated episodes of a sudden severe drop in the platelet count by far the most common drugs. That cause this are things like Quinidine, the blood, thinner, heparin and then also sulfonylureas, like Trimethoprim, Saltomethoxazoleaka, Bactrim and also there’s other antibioticsthat are fairly common that cause this as well so it’s not just drugs that can cause this, but, also certain foods, herbal remedies and one vaccine the mRNA Vaccine. The risk of it occurring within six weeks after getting the mRNA vaccination is increased.
However, the attributable risk of thrombocytopenia within six weeks after mRNA vaccination remains overall low at one in 25,000 vaccinated children now complications or long-term consequences of it in this age group are rare for the majority of children less than six years of age. The illness is self-limiting, vaccines stimulate, the immune system and in theory, could, in rare cases, cause it to mistakenly identify some of a patient’s own cells as enemy invaders that should be destroyed. But, with that said, millions of various vaccinations are given every year and clusters of thrombocytopenia don’t occur and regarding, the COVID vaccine, millions of doses have been given, and so far there are no other reports or associations with low platelet counts. So did the Pfizer vaccine cause this based on the timing of things? It seems like it did, but it’s too early to come to a conclusion. One way or another, we have to know all the facts and understand the autopsy report, but even then it’s still not a guarantee that we come to a solid conclusion although. This is an incredibly sad story and even if. It does prove that the vaccine did cause this I hope people aren’t dissuaded from getting the vaccine, because this type of thing is still very Incredibly rare.