According to new research, more than half of heart scans among hospitalized COVID-19 patients are abnormal, suggesting that the coronavirus may have a devastating impact on this vital organ.
A study of 69 countries, funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), found that 55 percent of 1,261 patients studied had abnormal changes in the way their heart pumped, with about one in seven showing evidence of severe dysfunction.
Most (901 patients) have never been diagnosed with heart problems before, leading scientists to conclude that COVID-19 itself can seriously affect the heart.
Among this group, heart scans were abnormal in 46 percent of patients and 13 percent had severe disease.
Just over half (54%) of all scans were performed in intensive care, and others were performed in general wards, heart and lung wards, and A&E.
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Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, associate medical director of the British Heart Foundation and consulting cardiologist, said: “Severe COVID-19 disease can cause damage to the heart and circulatory system.
“We urgently need to understand more about why this is happening in order to provide adequate care, both in the short and long term.
“This global study, conducted at the height of the pandemic, shows that we must be vigilant for cardiac complications in people with COVID-19 so that we can tailor their treatment if necessary.”
The study, published in the European Heart Journal – Cardiovascular ImagingThey found that the abnormalities were divided almost equally between the left and right chambers of the heart.
According to the scans, about 3 percent of the patients had suffered a recent heart attack.
As a result of their examination, a third of the patients had their treatment changed, including medication for heart failure or more careful control of fluids and therapy designed to support heart function.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Center for Research Excellence at the British Heart Foundation, University of Edinburgh.
The team cautioned that the study cannot conclude how common heart changes are in people who did not receive scans.
They noted that all of the patients in the study were in the hospital and suspected cardiac complications.
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Professor Marc Dweck, who led the research, said: “COVID-19 is a complex, multi-system disease that can have profound effects on many parts of the body, including the heart.
“Many physicians have hesitated to order echocardiograms for COVID-19 patients because it is an additional procedure that involves close contact with patients.
“Our work shows that these scans are important: they improved treatment for a third of the patients who received them.
“Heart damage is known to occur in severe flu, but we were surprised to see so many patients with heart damage with COVID-19 and so many patients with severe dysfunction.
“Now we need to understand the exact mechanism of this damage, whether it is reversible and what the long-term consequences of COVID-19 infection are in the heart.”
Reader Q&A: Why is the heart slightly to the left in the chest?
Asked by: Adam King, Huddersfield
The heart is located fairly centrally under the breastbone, but protrudes to the left. This is because the lower left chamber of the heart (the ‘left ventricle’) is responsible for pumping oxygenated blood around the entire body, so it must be stronger and larger than the right ventricle, which only pumps blood to lungs.
It is this left ventricle that you can feel beating in your chest. One in 10,000 people actually has a mirror image heart that points to the right, a condition known as ‘dextrocardia’.
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