Carlos continues to have bleeding issues :( The GI team and Dr Pujaro had a discussion with us about the plan. One of my concerns is the fact that GI needs the INR ( most recently was at 3.6) to be less than 2 in order to do a colonoscopy. Which the head GI doc keeps telling Carlos he would need to have in two years time anyway. I'm pretty sure Carlos's preference would be two years from now, as opposed to tomorrow! The concern with the INR being that low is that is not a therapeutic range for LVAD patients. He will be at increased risk for blood clots around the pump. If that occurs, the pump would have to be replaced....but we are NOT going there. On the other hand, he said that patients have gone for days and weeks without anticoagulation and have done fine. Freaks me out a bit cause has already had a history of two clots. Sigh. So Dr Pujaro (surgeon) says it's like having piranhas on one side of you and lions on the other....we have to do something and try to balance everything as much as possible. I wasn't terribly thrilled with his analogy.
They started a fifth unit of blood to be followed by a sixth and some plasma. They took him for a bleeding scan (having link difficulties on my tablet - sorry!). We are waiting for him to return. They said he could be gone for about 4 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment