By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay reporter
THURSDAY, Jan 7, 2021 (HealthDay News) – A new study found that patients with acute heart failure are almost twice as likely to die when they receive COVID-19.
“Our results support the prioritization of heart failure patients for COVID-19 vaccination as soon as it becomes available,” said researcher Dr. Amardeep Dastidar, Consultative Interventional Cardiologist with the North Bristol NHS Trust and the Bristol Heart Institute in England. “In the meantime, patients with heart failure of all ages should be classified as a high-risk group. It should be recommended that they maintain social distance and wear a face mask to prevent infection.”
Heart failure is the progressive weakening of the heart’s ability to pump blood and can cause shortness of breath, ankle swelling, and fatigue. A sudden and severe worsening of symptoms is a medical emergency that requires hospitalization.
In an analysis that included 283 patients admitted to a single hospital with acute heart failure, the researchers found a significant, but statistically insignificant, decrease in admissions for acute heart failure during the pandemic.
In the eight weeks before COVID, 164 patients were enrolled, compared with 119 patients after COVID. This was found in the study published on January 7th in the journal ESC Heart Failure.
“This finding could reflect public concerns about social distancing early in the national lockdown, late reporting of symptoms and concerns about hospitalization,” Dastidar said in a press release in a magazine. “In support of these explanations, our data shows an increase in referrals in the later weeks of the lockdown, in line with UK media reports encouraging patients to see a doctor if necessary.”
The number of deaths of patients with acute heart failure nearly doubled during the pandemic. About 11% of patients in the pre-COVID group died within 30 days compared to 21% in the post-COVID group, the researchers found.
“This could indicate a direct interaction or susceptibility to poorer outcomes in patients with acute heart failure with superimposed COVID infection,” said Dastidar. “It is noteworthy that our region had very low rates of COVID infection during the study and that there was still an association with higher mortality.”
More information
Contact the American Heart Association for more information on heart failure.
SOURCE: European Society of Cardiology, press release, January 7, 2021
HealthDay WebMD News
Copyright © 2013-2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Comments are closed.