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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCovid-19 infections leave an impact on the heart, raising concerns about lasting damage
Two new studies from Germany paint a sobering picture of the toll that Covid-19 takes on the heart, raising the specter of long-term damage after people recover, even if their illness was not severe enough to require hospitalization.
One study examined the cardiac MRIs of 100 people who had recovered from Covid-19 and compared them to heart images from 100 people who were similar but not infected with the virus. Their average age was 49 and two-thirds of the patients had recovered at home. More than two months later, infected patients were more likely to have troubling cardiac signs than people in the control group: 78 patients showed structural changes to their hearts, 76 had evidence of a biomarker signaling cardiac injury typically found after a heart attack, and 60 had signs of inflammation.
These were relatively young, healthy patients who fell ill in the spring, Valentina Puntmann, who led the MRI study, pointed out in an interview. Many of them had just returned from ski vacations. None of them thought they had anything wrong with their hearts.
The fact that 78% of recovered [patients] had evidence of ongoing heart involvement means that the heart is involved in a majority of patients, even if Covid-19 illness does not scream out with the classical heart symptoms, such as anginal chest pain, she told STAT. She is a cardiologist at University Hospital Frankfurt. In my view, the relatively clear onset of Covid-19 illness provides an opportunity to take proactive action and to look for heart involvement early.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/covid19-concerns-about-lasting-heart-damage/
crickets
(25,896 posts)SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)MiniMe
(21,676 posts)I consider myself lucky that I seem to have missed the contagious time. Then in March about the time they were shutting everything down, I had a defibrillator placed in my chest. I've pretty much been staying at home, not going out for much of anything. Doing some babysitting with my housemate for her 6 month old great granddaughter. Only sitting once a week. Everybody figured that I am pretty safe from the virus because I've been very careful.