Echocardiographic findings in COVID: incidence of carditis and correlations with COVID variants

Abstract

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), also referred to as COVID-19, was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020. The manifestations of COVID-19 are widely variable and range from asymptomatic infection to multi-organ failure and death. Like other viral illnesses, acute myocarditis and/or pericarditis has been reported to be associated with COVID-19 infection. The guidelines for the diagnosis of COVID-19 introduced the echocardiogram for diagnosis of carditis in these patients Pourpose In our study we investigated the incidences of myocarditis and/or pericarditis in a consecutive series of 1540 Athletes undergo to agonistic certification. Methods From march 2020 to October 2022 we enrolled 1540 consecutive patients that was affected by COVID. Every patients was admitted to ambulatory of sport medicine of 2 Italian centers to perform a return to play agonistic certificate. All patients perfomed an echocardiogram during the evaluation. We subdivided the incidence of carditis depend on the period and the variant of the covid (alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon). Overall, 69% males and 31%. females were enrolled with a mean age of 24.3 years (12–67 years). None presented note risk factor of a cardiac disease. Results The incidence of Echocardiographic abnormality was 3,2% in all period. By the echocardiogram we recognize 8 dilated cardiomiopathy (0,4%), 8 regional kinetic dysfunction (0,4%), 30 pericardial effusion (1,9%), 4 non-specific alterations (0,2%). Also we evaluated the incidence of the echocardiographic disease during the quarters and in correlation of COVID Variant. The results was showed in figure 1. Conclusions Based on our evaluation the incidence of echocardiographic findings in COVID was 3,2%, with a progressive reduction long the time, from alpha to omicron variants.