Abstract
Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 can result in myocardial injury in the acute phase. However, information on the late cardiac consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is limited.Methods: We conducted a prospective observational cohort study to investigate the late cardiac consequences of COVID-19. Standard echocardiography and myocardial strain assessment were performed, and cardiac blood biomarkers were tested in 86 COVID-19 survivors 327 days (IQR 318–337 days) after recovery. Comparisons were made with 28 age-matched and sex-matched healthy controls and 30 risk factor-matched patients.Results: There were no significant differences in all echocardiographic structural and functional parameters, including left ventricular (LV) global longitudinal strain, right ventricular (RV) longitudinal strain, LV end-diastolic volume, RV dimension, and the ratio of peak early velocity in mitral inflow to peak early diastolic velocity in the septal mitral annulus (E/e') among COVID-19 survivors, healthy controls and risk factor-matched controls. Even 26 patients with myocardial injury at admission did not have any echocardiographic structural and functional abnormalities. There were no significant differences among the three groups with respect to serum concentrations of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and high-sensitivity cardiac troponin I (cTnI).Conclusion: This study showed that COVID-19 survivors, including those with myocardial injury at admission and those with severe and critical types of illness, do not have any echocardiographic evidence of cardiac structural and functional abnormalities 327 days after diagnosis.
Highlights
Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is the deadliest pandemics caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]
Among the 86 patients, 45 (52%) were diagnosed as having moderate-type COVID-19 illness, 27 (31%) as having severe-type, and 14 (17%) as having critical-type from January to February 2020 according to the Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol of Novel Coronavirus issued by the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China
Our study showed that there were no significant differences in echocardiographic structural and functional parameters among COVID-19 survivors, healthy control, and risk factor-matched control 327 days after diagnosis regardless of the presence of myocardial injury in the acute phase and severity of the illness at admission
Summary
Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is the deadliest pandemics caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]. There are only a few studies on the cardiac outcome of COVID-19 survivors [9,10,11,12,13] These studies have reported residual cardiac structural and functional abnormalities even after recovery from COVID19 using cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging [11,12,13] and echocardiography [9,10,11]. We performed the present study to examine the myocardial mechanical function with speckle tracking echocardiography as well as cardiac blood biomarkers in COVID-19 survivors 327 days after diagnosis. Information on the late cardiac consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is limited
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