Understanding blood clot dangers as Jalen Hurts sidelines for season

Bring in our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Tara Narula. And, Doctor, good morning to you. We know the initial diagnosis was a superficial blood clot, but now we know he has multiple pulmonary embolisms. What is the difference, and what makes it so serious right now? Right, so last week we talked about these superficial clots and the veins that sit a couple centimeters under the leg and how those can sometimes either progress to a deep vein clot or be associated with a deep vein clot. Those deep vein clots can break off, travel to the heart. from the heart they can go to the arteries of the lungs where they block the blood flow to the lungs at that point you can have issues with oxygenation breathing you can have even death of the lung tissue heart strain heart failure shock and death actually 30 percent of cases that go untreated will result in death so this is considered a medical emergency when we find it so it is very important to pick it up early and diagnose it and the team says that he's being treated with blood thinners what exactly are those and the restrictions involved with that. Right. So for someone who is generally considered low risk and stable, you can treat as an outpatient with blood thinners. There's a whole host of medicines we use, sometimes things like Eliquis or Xarelto. And essentially the blood thinners work, they don't actually dissolve the clots, but what they do is they prevent those clots from expanding, they prevent new clots from forming, and they allow your body time to dissolve the clot on its own. Typically someone will be on those blood thinners for anywhere from three to six months, however, If they are considered at increased risk of recurrence or high risk or some other underlying cause, it could be indefinite lifelong anticoagulation with blood thinners. So it is important to kind of figure out in a lot of cases what the underlying reason was. Yeah, it's important to figure it out early. So what are the symptoms? So if you have a PE, we think about shortness of breath, a rapid heart rate. You can have pain that we call pleuritic. So you take a deep breath in and it's a sharp pain. You can also have a fast heartbeat. You can have fever, even lightheadedness or passing out. And of course, George, you always look for that sign in the leg of a red, warm, tender, swollen leg that could be that DVT associated in the future with a pulmonary embolism. And as you said, just want him to have a full recovery. That's what's most important. Exactly, Dr. Narula, thank you as always.