Key result
Symptomatic post-COVID-19 linked to a ~190% higher rate of impaired LV GLS versus asymptomatic patients.
Why the study?
Patients frequently present with cardiac symptoms after mild COVID-19 despite normal primary cardiac tests, raising the question of whether two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography detects differences between symptomatic and asymptomatic patients.
Does 2D speckle tracking echocardiography show differences in LV-GLS between symptomatic and asymptomatic post-COVID-19 patients with normal conventional echocardiography?
Observational (n=55)
Single-blind
No
Does 2D speckle tracking echocardiography show differences in LV-GLS between symptomatic and asymptomatic post-COVID-19 patients with normal conventional echocardiography?
Post-COVID-19 patients with cardiac symptoms have a higher prevalence of impaired left ventricular global longitudinal strain compared to asymptomatic patients, despite normal conventional echocardiography.
May support targeted LV-GLS evaluation in symptomatic post-COVID patients; hypothesis-generating and requires prospective validation.
Objective: In recent years, coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has been the primary health problem and because of the virus affinity to endothelial cells, it has become an important reason of vascular problems and cardiac injury. After mild COVID-19 infection, patients frequently attend cardiology clinics with cardiac symptoms and their primary cardiac tests are mostly normal. In this study we aimed to analyze if two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography shows any difference between symptomatic and asymptomatic post-COVID19 patients when transthoracic echocardiography parameters are normal. Material and Methods: In this retrospective single center study, 2,741 transthoracic echocardiography records were assessed and 108 post-COVID-19 patients were detected and divided into symptomatic and asymptomatic patient groups and left ventricular global longitudinal strain (LV-GLS) values were compared. Results: The number of patients with normal LV-GLS values were equal in the groups and there were 4 patients whose values were borderline in the asymptomatic group, while there was none in the symptomatic group. The number of patients with impaired GLS values in the symptomatic group were higher than the asymptomatic group (15 vs 4 patients) and the difference was statistically different (p=0.008). The average LV-GLS values were -18.88±2.50 in the asymptomatic group and -17.40±3.68 in symptomatic group but the difference was not statistically significant (p=0.098). Conclusion: More symptomatic patients than the asymptomatic ones have impaired LV-GLS values according to the results of this study. Even if it is not statistically significant, the mean LV-GLS values are also reduced in symptomatic patients after mild COVID-19 infection.
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Çelik et al. (2023) conducted an observational in Post-COVID-19 (n=55). Symptomatic post-COVID-19 vs. Asymptomatic post-COVID-19 was evaluated on Impaired left ventricular global longitudinal strain (<-16%) (p=0.008). Symptomatic post-COVID-19 patients had a significantly higher rate of impaired left ventricular global longitudinal strain compared to asymptomatic patients (48.4% vs 16.7%, p=0.008).
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