elevation, which signifies heart damage, but few have exhibited extreme cardiac events like heart attacks or arrhythmias. He called it a medical disconnect.
“The cardiac biomarker elevations are high, but very few patients get sick in the heart, so to me this has been all smoke and no fire,” he said. “But now, two to three months out, patients could be exhibiting significant abnormalities… It means that there’s something going on long-term that we didn’t suspect clinically.”
Experts caution that the results of the two studies are just the beginning, and more research is needed to replicate the findings and further understand the links between COVID-19and the heart. But each new study could affect outcomes for patients by potentially offering evidence that anti-inflammatory medicines and blood thinners are beneficial to coronavirus patients.
“The major findings are going to have the impact of fostering additional research,” said Fonarow. “These studies will be important, I think, to inform clinicians to potentially look further. Whereas they may have previously thought, you know, we just look at whether there’s any residual lung damage and stop there.”
