Abstract 12142: Treadmill Exercise Stress Echocardiography Exposes Impaired Left Ventricular Function in Patients Recovering From Hospitalization for COVID-19 versus Historical Controls

Abstract

Usual clinical testing rarely reveals persisting cardiac abnormalities in patients after hospitalization for Covid-19. Such testing may overlook residual changes responsible for increased adverse cardiac events seen post-discharge. To further elucidate patients’ long-term status, we performed exercise stress echocardiography (ESE) in 15 patients age 30-63 without myocarditis 3 to 31 months after hospital discharge. We compared patient outcomes to published data in healthy controls (HC) exercising according to the same protocol. Patients’ treadmill exercise (Bruce protocol), averaging 8.2 min, was halted by dyspnea or fatigue. Baselines before stress averaged the same in recovering patients (RP) and HC except for heart rate (HR): 81±13 bpm for RP and 63±8 for HC (p<0.0001). Peak stress values in RP were compared with HC: Stress revealed significantly lower LVEF and raised E/e’ soon after peak effort in RP compared with HC performing the same exercise. Thus, when stressed, patients with no known cardiac impairment before or during Covid-19 hospitalization showed modest but consistently diminished systolic contractile function and diastolic LV compliance during recovery compared to HC. Peak HR during stress was significantly elevated in RP vs. HC; peak SBP also trended higher. Average systolic pulmonary artery pressures among RP remained normal. Our measurements during ESE uniquely identified residual abnormality in cardiac contractile function not evident in the unstressed condition. This finding exposes a previously-unrecognized residual influence of Covid-19 that may relate to underlying autonomic dysfunction, microvascular disease, or diffuse interstitial changes after subclinical myocarditis and may have long-term implications for clinical management and later prognosis.