High Mortality With COVID‐19 Acute Pericarditis

n this issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA), Li and Shi, and their coauthors used the National Inpatient Sample 2020 database and analyzed 211 619 patients with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19. 1 They found that the incidence of acute pericarditis was 0.46% overall, with a lower incidence during the second half of the year, attributed to the initiation of dexamethasone for patients with COVID-19 with respiratory compromise.They compared the 980 patients with COVID-19 and acute pericarditis to the patients with COVID-19 without acute pericarditis, and found a striking difference in mortality (21.4% versus 11%, P<0.001).After matching that balanced age, younger patients might be more likely to have a vigorous, exuberant immune response; anemia that may be a marker for chronic disease; chronic kidney disease and cancer that reflect immune issues and diminished reserve; lower income, higher Medicaid, urban teaching hospital care site, and factors that can reflect access impediments to care; the patients with COVID-19 and acute pericarditis still had a much greater mortality rate (21.3% versus 11.1%, P<0.001).