With the continuation of the epidemic in Shanghai, the incidence of new crown pneumonia has increased, the number of severe diseases has increased, and the number of deaths from multi-organ lesions in the elderly has increased.
Although patients have many underlying diseases, cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, diabetes, malignant tumors, autoimmune diseases, etc., the starting factor that causes the acute exacerbation of these chronic diseases is pneumonia caused by new coronavirus infection.
This once again reveals the "lung priming" theory about multi-organ failure in the elderly.
This "lung priming" theory was studied and summarized by academician Wang Shiwen, an expert in geriatrics, and his leading team in clinical work.
In their clinical work, they found that the elderly often have multiple organ dysfunction, such as heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, digestive tract and so on. This multi-organ insufficiency is often caused by pulmonary insufficiency, and lung infection is the main cause. Therefore, it is speculated that the lungs may be the initiating organs of multi-organ insufficiency.
And they did more than 20 years of research. Statistics show that among the causes of multi-organ failure, lung infection accounts for 82.8%, and the initial stage of lung infection is often the first symptom of cold.
In this way, due to lung infection, patients, especially elderly patients, sequentially appear insufficiency and failure of multiple organs throughout the body, such as heart failure, kidney failure, liver, gastrointestinal tract, brain failure, etc., and eventually lead to death.
Hence the doctrine of "lung priming". Lung infections kicked off "multi-organ failure," and lung infections opened a "Pandora's box."
Now, because respiratory failure can be treated with a ventilator, patients eventually die from other organ failures, such as heart failure, kidney failure, gastrointestinal bleeding, intravascular coagulation, etc.
Why do lung infections cause multi-organ failure throughout the body?
When a lung is infected, inflammation occurs in the lungs, and this inflammation triggers an inflammatory response throughout the body.
When the lungs are infected, there is a lack of oxygen. In addition to causing damage to organs throughout the body, hypoxia can also cause inflammation, acidosis, electrolyte disorders, and in turn interact with each other.
In this way, inflammation in the lungs combined with lack of oxygen will cause a large number of "inflammatory factors" in the body. This inflammatory factor acts on tissues and organs throughout the body, causing damage. Just like the skin and flesh and joints on the surface of our body, if there is inflammation, it will be hot, red, swollen, painful, dysfunctional, and sometimes feverish, these are all manifestations of inflammatory reactions. The same is true of inflammation of the organs in the body.
When the inflammation occurs, it will also affect the coagulation function and make it easy to grow blood clots.
If there are people with coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease, the blood supply is insufficient, coupled with the lack of oxygen, it is even more impossible to supply energy; blood clotting is not normal, easy to grow blood clots, can not be easy to make diseases?
The elderly, even if there is no disease in the lungs, but due to osteoporosis and calcium removal, the shape of the thoracic cage has changed, which will affect lung function; lung tissue is also aging, lung capacity, lung function will be significantly reduced, once there is an infection, it is not easy to treat, it is not easy to be good.
Therefore, once the elderly have a lung infection, the risk is significantly increased. Young and middle-aged people with serious chronic underlying diseases are also at great risk.
Like the new crown pneumonia deaths in Shanghai this time, although the direct cause of death is mostly basic diseases, but before getting pneumonia, the underlying diseases of these patients should still be relatively stable. A pneumonia, which initiates a systemic inflammatory response, leads to an acute onset of the underlying disease, and multi-organ failure leads to death.
Indeed, cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death for urban and rural residents on the mainland. But the reason why the infectious disease is terrible is that it spreads quickly and has a large number of patients in a short period of time. Like the new crown virus mutation of Omer Kerong, the infectivity is very strong, in less than a month, more than 400,000 people in Shanghai were infected, more than 30,000 confirmed cases, which is still the result of the rapid closure and management. If patients with underlying diseases are infected with new crown pneumonia and do not receive timely and effective treatment, they will also have multiple serious illnesses and deaths.
Therefore, the new crown pneumonia should be well prevented.
Another point is that the time of new crown pneumonia is still short, and people's understanding of the disease needs to be deepened.