After kidney failure and cardiac arrests being reported among patients detected with a virulent strain of malaria, doctors are now alarmed by yet another new complication: paralytic stroke.
That is what happened in the case of 45-year-old Arjun More from Aurangabad, who was admitted to JJ Hospital on Wednesday morning. More had initially complained of fever, weakness and chills. But doctors treating him realised that along with falciparum malaria, the patient also had a weakness in the left side of his body. He was diagnosed with hemiplegia (paralysis in one half of the body).
“Treatment and medications seem to be working. His fever has subsided and platelet count which had initially dropped to just 19,000 is now up to one lakh,” said Dr Hemant Gupta, associate professor and head of department of medicine, JJ Hospital and consultant physician Bombay Hospital.
While More is stable, his limb movement is yet to become normal, he added.
According to Gupta, paralysis in a malaria patient is not unheard of. “What happens in malaria is rouleaus formation, in which the red blood corpuscles try to clump over one another, choking up the micro-vessels that supply blood,” he explained.
This results in an infarct — an area of tissue that undergoes necrosis. “Since different parts of the brain control different functions, cutting off of blood supply to a certain area can result in paralysis,” he said.
“A paralysis patient is given blood thinning agents, but malaria itself causes blood thinning,” Gupta said.
Treating such a patient is a tricky thing, said doctors. “Treatment has to be systematic. Also, early diagnosis can help them regain control of movement,” said Gupta.
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