Abstract
The cardiovascular complications of acute coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are well described, but the post-acute cardiovascular manifestations of COVID-19 have not yet been comprehensively characterized. Here we used national healthcare databases from the US Department of Veterans Affairs to build a cohort of 153,760 individuals with COVID-19, as well as two sets of control cohorts with 5,637,647 (contemporary controls) and 5,859,411 (historical controls) individuals, to estimate risks and 1-year burdens of a set of pre-specified incident cardiovascular outcomes. We show that, beyond the first 30 d after infection, individuals with COVID-19 are at increased risk of incident cardiovascular disease spanning several categories, including cerebrovascular disorders, dysrhythmias, ischemic and non-ischemic heart disease, pericarditis, myocarditis, heart failure and thromboembolic disease. These risks and burdens were evident even among individuals who were not hospitalized during the acute phase of the infection and increased in a graded fashion according to the care setting during the acute phase (non-hospitalized, hospitalized and admitted to intensive care). Our results provide evidence that the risk and 1-year burden of cardiovascular disease in survivors of acute COVID-19 are substantial. Care pathways of those surviving the acute episode of COVID-19 should include attention to cardiovascular health and disease.
Highlights
The cardiovascular complications of acute coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are well described, but the post-acute cardiovascular manifestations of COVID-19 have not yet been comprehensively characterized
We used the US Department of Veterans Affairs national healthcare databases to build a cohort of 153,760 US veterans who survived the first 30 d of COVID-19 and two control groups: a contemporary cohort consisting of 5,637,647 users of the US Veterans Health Administration (VHA) system with no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection and a historical cohort consisting of 5,859,411 non-COVID-19-infected VHA users during 2017
In this study involving 153,760 people with COVID-19, 5,637,647 contemporary controls and 5,859,411 historical controls—which, altogether, correspond to 12,095,836 person-years of follow-up—we provide evidence that, beyond the first 30 d of infection, people with COVID-19 exhibited increased risks and 12-month burdens of incident cardiovascular diseases, including cerebrovascular disorders, dysrhythmias, inflammatory heart disease, ischemic heart disease, heart failure, thromboembolic disease and other cardiac disorders
Summary
The cardiovascular complications of acute coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are well described, but the post-acute cardiovascular manifestations of COVID-19 have not yet been comprehensively characterized. We used the US Department of Veterans Affairs national healthcare databases to build a cohort of 153,760 US veterans who survived the first 30 d of COVID-19 and two control groups: a contemporary cohort consisting of 5,637,647 users of the US Veterans Health Administration (VHA) system with no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection and a historical cohort (pre-dating the COVID-19 pandemic) consisting of 5,859,411 non-COVID-19-infected VHA users during 2017 These cohorts were followed longitudinally to estimate the risks and 12-month burdens of pre-specified incident cardiovascular outcomes in the overall cohort and according to care setting of the acute infection (non-hospitalized, hospitalized and admitted to intensive care)
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