How Covid Affects the Heart

Coronavirus can impact your heart in several ways. It’s very rare for the virus to directly infect your heart health, usually, it causes complications throughout your body that lead to heart damage. Coronavirus can lead to heart problems among people who never had heart disease before. But if you have cardiovascular disease, you face a high risk of heart problems. If you have heart problems and risk factors, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, or high cholesterol, you also face a greater risk of serious complications. Coronavirus can impact your heart while you’re sick but also after the COVID-19 virus has left your body. In this article by Arlak Corazon, you will get all the requirements on How Covid Affects the Heart.

Researchers are still analyzing how many patients with coronavirus experience myocardial injuries; their estimates range from 7% to 40%. Myocardial injury is more common among people who require care in the ICU. If you have heart damage, you face a higher risk of diseases as your body tries to fight off the virus

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Some heart problems can show up while a patient is infected or hospitalised with Coronavirus These heart problems are generally called myocardial injury. Myocardial injury means that cells in your heart muscle have no energy or it is dead. Sometimes, patients with myocardial injury don’t have any heart disease symptoms, instead, they're diagnosed through cardiac imaging or blood tests. Other patients might have symptoms like dyspnea(pain of shortness of death) and chest pain.

Different Types of Heart Conditions Seen After COVID-19

Early research suggests inflammation leads to coronavirus heart damage. When you first become infected, your body activates your immune system. This may lead to the production of cytokines and inflammatory cells. Cytokines are like small proteins that activate your immune response. This process of inflammation is crucial and helpful to your body. But coronavirus causes too much inflammation for some patients. This condition is called cytokine release syndrome. It happens in severe COVID cases. Huge inflammation can harm your heart system in multiple different ways, including:

1. Arrhythmia - This inflammation can interrupt your heart’s electrical signals, as a result of arrhythmia, your heart can lose its normal rhythm, so If you already have arrhythmia, coronavirus can make it worse.
2. Pericarditis - It is an inflammation of the layer surrounding your heart and can cause fluid to accumulate around your heart and chest pain.
3. Heart failure- is a condition where excess fluid and edema(swelling)  can build up in your body.
4. Blood clots are the lining of your blood vessels that can become inflamed. When this happens, you face a greater risk of heart attack, blood clots, or heart stroke.
5. Myocarditis. This is an inflammation of your heart muscle, patients with coronavirus face a higher risk of myocarditis compared with those who have a strong immune system.

Risk Factors Associated with Heart Problems

If you have any of the following conditions as mentioned below, you face a higher risk of coronavirus complications:

• Heart failure.
• Overweight/obesity.
• History of a stroke.
• High blood pressure.
• Sickle cell disease.
• Coronary artery disease.
• Diabetes.
• Thalassemias.

New or lingering symptoms

Coronavirus can cause new or lingering symptoms in people who are severely sick. But it can also cause lingering issues in patients who have mild or asymptomatic coronavirus. Shortness of breath, Fatigue, and brain fog are among the most common problems. Symptoms that could be related to your heart include mentioned below,

• Chest pain.
• Heart palpitations.
• Fast heart rate (tachycardia).
• Feeling dizzy or lightheaded.
• Shortness of breath.

If you have any of these symptoms, call your doctor right away to discuss how you’re feeling during COVID-19, then your doctor may want to run some tests to check your heart functions. 

Effects of heart problems in children after COVID-19

In general, kids who get sick with Covid-19 do not have serious problems as often as adults do. An uncommon but serious problem of COVID-19 called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in kids, or MIS-C can cause serious cardiogenic shock, heart damage, or death. In some cases, children who survive MIS-C can be left with stiffened heart muscles and abnormal heart rhythms that stop the heart from relaxing normally and beating in a proper way. MIS-C has some similar symptoms to Kawasaki disease.

Conclusion 

COVID-19 can lead to heart problems among people who never had heart diseases before such as Arrhythmia, blood clots, Heart failure, and Myocarditis, etc. consult with your doctor if you are infected with coronavirus and now facing these issues. This article by Arlak Corazon is all about How Covid Affects the Heart and if you have any queries then feel free to contact us, we are always happy to help you.