When a patient is hospitalized with COVID-19, signs of damage to the right side of the heart may indicate a greater risk of death, according to a study from investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. The findings suggest that physicians should consider looking for such damage using a readily available and non-invasive ultrasound test called an echocardiogram.
Doctors commonly assess lung X-rays, medical history, blood-oxygen levels, blood markers of inflammation and other indicators to determine which incoming COVID-19 patients are most at risk of developing severe disease. In a study of 510 patients, published in the October issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the investigators found that signs of damage to the heart’s right ventricle on an echocardiogram are another strong and independent predictor of severe disease. Patients who had signs of impaired right ventricle pumping capacity were on average two and a half times more likely to die from COVID-19 during their hospitalization.
The heart’s right ventricle is the pump that pushes blood into the lungs to be oxygenated. Doctors have long known that problems affecting lung function, including inflammation triggered by respiratory viruses, can stress and impair this pump, usually by increasing the lungs’ resistance to blood flow. But the investigators believe the new study is the first to show that such an impairment is an independent predictor of COVID-19 mortality risk, with predictive value over and above that of other risk markers.
research.weill.cornell.edu/...
Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Research paper: (PDF file)
