12% of Covid patients develop heart problems in hospital

Nearly 12 percent of hospitalized coronavirus patients developed heart problems while they were admitted, the Heart Foundation reported based on a study of over 3 thousand Covid-19 patients.

Atrial arrhythmias are most common with 5 percent of patients developing it. About 2 percent developed heart failure and 0.5 myocardial infarction. Almost 7 percent of admitted patients developed a pulmonary embolism.

"An infection makes the whole body sick. It is therefore not surprising that after a virus infection, inflammation develops in the body. The heart is also part of this," Folkert Asselbergs, research leader and professor of cardiology at UMC Utrecht, explained to AD. "The most important question is whether this will damage the heart in the long term. Do they develop symptoms. Does it affect their quality of life and life expectancy? Follow-up research should prove that."

"It is alarming that corona can be associated with problems in the cardiovascular system," Floris Italianer, director of the Heart Foundation, said to the newspaper. "For the treatment of corona patients it is important that more knowledge is gained quickly. We want to know which patients have a high probability for corona being serious. The research we support will hopefully contribute quickly to that."