
Cardiovascular MRI in Patients Recently Recovered from Covid-19 - pama
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916
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helsinkiandrew
I’ve never understood why the long term effects of Covid-19 have seemingly
been ignored by the people who say this isn’t a big deal, deaths aren’t
significant, and it mostly effects old people.

Normal flu can cause long term cardiovascular effects in some people and Swine
flu even more so. Given the severity of the effects of Covid-19 on peoples
lungs, serious long term seems likely.

~~~
heavyset_go
> _I’ve never understood why the long term effects of Covid-19 have seemingly
> been ignored by the people who say this isn’t a big deal, deaths aren’t
> significant, and it mostly effects old people._

It's because most people who claim this know that they're being disingenuous.
Minimization is a common manipulation technique.

~~~
numpad0
Am I being overly charitable if I'd say it's typical for a homo sapiens
examples to deny/minimize/buy into conspiracy theories to save themselves from
getting mentally overloaded

~~~
adventured
> Am I being overly charitable

No, you're being reasonable in your assessment. It's an entirely common reason
for why it happens. People rationalize away things that make them feel
uncomfortable, scared, or things they simply don't want to deal with (if they
confront it, it forces a change in their life, or a difficult choice and
similar).

There's a finite load that people can handle at one time, whether that's
trying to quit smoking or dealing with problems with their children or work,
etc.

Ignorance plays an important role, no question, however it's related to the
unwillingness to confront an issue first and foremost. An unwillingness to
confront a thing (eg ignorance about SARS-CoV-2) is a consequence rather than
cause; that unwillingness is often caused by the existing mental tax, life
stress, the person is under (and all people have varying capacities for
absorbing that, some people can't absorb much). This is another reason why
childhood education is so critical, it can be very difficult to find the time
to properly educate yourself later in life, as life's burdens attempt to
swallow you; and your brain is more often going to spongehappy (knowledge nom
nom nom), versus a more resistent adult brain that recognizes the effort and
untangling required in dealing with/reconciling internal knowledge conflicts
once incorrect information is in place. Teaching children _how to think_ is
hugely important, versus the person attempting to remake their brain processes
later in life (such as during a global pandemic, as they're losing their job),
when it's guaranteed to be a huge struggle with existing cruft/debt.

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musha68k
Lurking on medical twitter I've also seen that pulmonary fibrosis might be
another surprisingly common post covid19 ailment:

[https://twitter.com/leticiakawano/status/1279960010504749061...](https://twitter.com/leticiakawano/status/1279960010504749061?s=21)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulmonary_fibrosis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulmonary_fibrosis)

~~~
chadcmulligan
From the wiki link "The scarring is permanent once it has developed", that is
scary

~~~
claudeganon
Even more frightening is the statement, “life expectancy is generally less
than five years.”

~~~
unsrsly
Not to downplay lung scarring from covid, but the "life expectancy less than
five years" in this article refers to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis which is a
completely different disease. We don't yet have the data to say what long term
outcomes are after severe cases of covid.

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sradman
> our findings reveal that significant cardiac involvement occurs
> independently of the severity of original presentation and persists beyond
> the period of acute presentation, with no significant trend toward reduction
> of imaging or serological findings during the recovery period. Our findings
> may provide an indication of potentially considerable burden of inflammatory
> disease in large and growing parts of the population and urgently require
> confirmation in a larger cohort.

This is unexpected. A chronic inflammatory disease seems to persist well
beyond recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection.

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DoreenMichele
I have a really hard time reading through something like this and pulling out
pertinent information. This seems to be the quick and dirty summary in
something close to layman's terms:

 _A total of 78 patients who recovered from COVID-19 infection (78%) had
cardiovascular involvement ... The most prevalent abnormality was myocardial
inflammation ... detected in 60 patients recently recovered from COVID-19
(60%), followed by regional scar and pericardial enhancement._

If anyone can else can give us a better breakdown that is succinct and doesn't
require a medical degree to follow the jargon, please do. (I have had a class
in medical terminology and I read medical records for five years as part of my
job. But I was processing accident claims, not sickness claims, so I almost
never read medical records saying anything about the heart.)

~~~
pama
Here is a simplified discussion:
[https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/covid19-concerns-
about-l...](https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/covid19-concerns-about-
lasting-heart-damage/)

~~~
musha68k
I've just passed this to friends and family. Thanks for sharing.

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claudeganon
>CMR revealed cardiac involvement in 78 patients (78%) and ongoing myocardial
inflammation in 60 patients (60%), independent of preexisting conditions,
severity and overall course of the acute illness, and time from the original
diagnosis.

If damage to people’s hearts proves long term or if even mild COVID cases
predispose people to heart problems later on, the knock on effects for
countries that chose to let the pandemic run rampant are going to be
horrendous.

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ghufran_syed
Err, before everyone gets too excited, it would be nice to know what the
equivalent study done on comparable influenza patients would look like. If it
looks similar, then we probably don't have much to worry about, if the covid
picture is more severe or more frequent, then we _might_ have cause to worry

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
This virus has nothing in common with the flu, except being a respiratory
virus. I don't mean this in terms of survival rates, although it's
transparently obvious that diminishing the danger is the purpose of this
talking point.

But even ignoring that, there is just no reason why COVID should be compared
with the flu and not, say, Hepatitis A (B or C), Ebola, HPV. Route of
infection (here: respiratory) correlates welll with the effectiveness of
various countermeasures. Symptoms are still somewhat similar but less so, with
COVID causing rare symptoms like anosmia but relatively little fever and
almost no rhinitis. It's completely useless for pharmaceutical treatments as
well as for predicting severity, which for respiratory (and every other class)
ranges from benign to certain death.

