Echocardiography can help predict which COVID-19 patients are at higher risk of developing heart issues, requiring additional monitoring down the road.
Johns Hopkins Medicine doctors compared 80 COVID-positive patients with 34 who did not have the disease but were also treated in the hospital’s intensive or immediate care units for breathing problems.
They applied speckle-tracking strain to patients’ echocardiograms to assess the health of the heart chamber responsible for receiving oxygenated blood from the lung, known as the left atrium.
Overall, infected patients showed significantly lower left atrial strain and emptying fraction compared to non-COVID individuals, indicating this vital heart chamber was not functioning properly.
Adding speckle-tracking to the normal health workup for these individuals is feasible and can help predict those who may be in danger of developing an irregular heartbeat and possibly heart failure.
"A lot of patients already get echocardiograms while in the hospital; the addition of strain analysis requires no extra scanning of the patient," first author Erin Goerlich, MD, a cardiology fellow at the noted Baltimore university, said Thursday. "So, this is a safe and affordable new data point that can clue us in about who might develop atrial fibrillation."
Goerlich and co-investigators also analyzed the blood of patients with COVID-19, noticing people with atrial fibrillation had higher levels of troponin and NT-proBNP, two well-known indicators of heart stress.
"This tells us that COVID-19 patients with high levels of these biomarkers should be followed more closely and may benefit from an echocardiogram," Goerlich added in a statement.
The group is actively assessing if these reported heart problems persist after recovery, particularly measures of strain and emptying fraction.
Read the full analysis published in the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography here.
Matt joined Chicago’s TriMed team in 2018 covering all areas of health imaging after two years reporting on the hospital field. He holds a bachelor’s in English from UIC, and enjoys a good cup of coffee and an interesting documentary.