Hamburg's corona dead died as a result

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The treatment of Covid-19 patients with blood thinners is showing success.

This has been confirmed by the evaluation of the autopsies carried out by the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) last year.

"Our autopsies of the deceased have shown that the Covid-19 sufferers could still have blood clots in their pulmonary arteries despite the administration of blood thinners," said the director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, Benjamin Ondruschka, on Thursday.

However, the statistical analysis showed longer survival times since the therapy change.

According to Ondruschka, this is “an important success of joint research and underlines the importance of forensic medicine for the living”.

Now studies are needed to compare the results with the data from surviving intensive care patients.

Ondruschka is the successor to Klaus Püschel, who previously headed the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the UKE.

As early as May 2020, UKE researchers published that Covid-19 leads to thrombosis and pulmonary embolism in an unusually high number of cases of illness.

As a result, the national guidelines for the treatment of those affected were adapted.

Since then it has been recommended to treat Covid-19 patients with a blood thinner after an individual risk assessment.

Evaluation of 735 Sars-CoV-2 associated deaths

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Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Hamburg Institute for Forensic Medicine at the UKE has carried out an evaluation of a total of 735 Sars-CoV-2-associated deaths in the 2020 calendar year in order to gain further knowledge about the pathogen and the disease.

This was done with the consent of the relatives.

The focus was on the following questions: How many Hamburgers died from or with Covid-19?

How old were these people?

And what previous illnesses did they have?

Around two thirds of those examined died during the second wave of pandemics from October, most of them in December.

The evaluation on behalf of the health authority showed: In 618 cases, the UKE doctors determined Covid 19 disease as the cause of death.

Specifically, most of the infected died from pneumonia or from the consequences of a thrombosis.

In seven percent of the cases, the deceased were infected with the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen, but the infection was not the cause of death.

In addition, the UKE scientists discovered that Covid-19 deaths from Hamburg most often died in hospital and regularly had several previous illnesses.

According to the information, 20 percent of the deceased were pathologically overweight.

"The median of those who died from Covid-19 was 83 years old, and 75 percent of all fatalities were older than 76 years," the UKE continued.

The deceased men were statistically a little younger than the women, and more men than women died.

One of the most common pre-existing conditions is high blood pressure

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Children or adolescents were not among the deaths examined by the Institute for Forensic Medicine.

Seven people died as a result of the infection before they reached the age of 50.

According to the evaluation, the most common pre-existing conditions include high blood pressure, chronic kidney failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

According to the information, there were “no significant differences in age or gender distribution” for Covid 19 deaths across the Hamburg districts.

More than 66,000 people have died of or with the coronavirus in Germany since the beginning of the corona pandemic, in Hamburg more than 1200. The number of Covid-19 deaths determined by the Institute for Forensic Medicine is slightly lower than that of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) published figures for Hamburg for the same period.

Reasons for this are, in addition to a different counting method, also incorrect recordings.

In the Hanseatic city, the deceased have been examined for a Sars-CoV-2 infection at the Institute for Forensic Medicine since the first deaths in March 2020.

According to the UKE, every dead person is first tested for the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen before all other examinations.

This result is compared with the information from the medical findings and the entries in the death certificate.

As a result, the forensic scientists also discovered Covid 19 cases that were not known during his lifetime.

In addition to the PCR test and the evaluation of the medical preliminary findings, the scientists examined the deceased using a post-mortem computed tomography, a minimally invasive autopsy or a conventional autopsy.

"On this basis, systematically examined body tissues already showed in early summer that Covid-19 is a disease that can damage the function of various organs."