March 5, 2022

Jennifer Abbasi, AMA Associate Managing News Editor for JAMA Network on March 2, 2022 article titled, “The COVID Heart—One Year After SARS-CoV-2 Infection, Patients Have an Array of Increased Cardiovascular Risks” writes in an analysis of nearly 154, 000 Veterans with previous history of Covid infection and treatments both in/out patient settings regarding long-term cardiovascular effects.

Access the complete “The Covid heart” article here

The article looks at a “study, published in Nature Medicine by researchers at the Veterans Affairs (VA) St Louis Health Care System. They found that in the year after recovering from the illness’s acute phase, patients had increased risks of an array of cardiovascular problems, including abnormal heart rhythms, heart muscle inflammation, blood clots, strokes, myocardial infarction, and heart failure”. Increased cardiovascular risk was noted no matter how serious the illness or complicated the treatment but were more serious in patients with heart failure and atrial fibrillation”.

The physician, Dr Al-Aly in the April 2021 study and the article that followed entitled, “High-dimensional characterization of post-acute sequelae of COVID-19” concludes with, “In our work, we show serious long-term cardiovascular disease consequences of COVID-19,” Al-Aly concludes, “Most of these are lifelong conditions that will affect people for a lifetime and may impact their quality of life and other health outcomes. The risks reported in our paper may appear small but given the large number of people with COVID-19 in the US and globally, these numbers will likely translate into millions of people with heart disease in the US and many more around the world. We need to realize this now and make sure we are prepared and ready to address the needs of these patients.”

Access the Complete Covid Study here

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