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Abstract Background Studies on long-term outcomes have shown that coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) survivors have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events at 1-year. However, most studies have analyzed outcomes at 1-year excluding or not the first 21-30 days, but there is no information for other follow-up periods. Purpose Our aim was to examine CVD outcomes during the first 3 months after infection/inclusion and from 4 to 12 months, in COVID-19 patients compared to individuals that did not had COVID-19, by sex. Methods Data were obtained from the Data analytics program for health research and innovation (PADRIS) from Catalonia, North-Eastern Spain. PADRIS includes data from the Catalan health system, covering 7.9 million inhabitants. Selected individuals were ≥45 years old with a positive COVID-19 PCR/antigen/rapid test in March-May 2020. We also included randomly selected individuals without a positive/suspicious COVID-19 test. Follow-up was obtained until January 31st, 2021 for CVD events (atrial fibrillation(AF)/flutter/tachycardia, bypass/revascularization, heart failure, peripheral artery disease, stroke/transient ischemic attack, and thrombosis), and until March 31st, 2021 for mortality. CVD event incidence was compared with Cox proportional hazards regression. Results We included 173,782 individuals, of those 30,831 had COVID-19. Median follow-up was 335 days for CVD outcomes and 392 days for mortality. Incidence of CVD outcomes and mortality had a large increase in COVID-19 individuals during the first 100 days of follow-up. In the whole follow-up, and in the first 3 months, having COVID-19 was associated with lower time to all CVD events and mortality in females and males (Figures 1 and 2). During the first 3 months, the CVD events with the highest risk increase were thrombosis in females and AF/flutter/tachycardia in males. In the period from 4 months to the end of the follow-up, there was an increased risk of heart failure in females (1.73 1.23-2.43). While in males, there was an increased risk of AF/flutter/tachycardia (1.61 1.10-2.36) and of thrombosis (2.85 1.18-6.86). Conclusions Our findings suggest that incidence of some CVD outcomes associated with COVID-19 may decrease after 3 months. However, control of arrhythmias, heart failure, and thrombosis could be necessary after this period depending on the sex. CVD outcome incidence in females CVD outcome incidence in males
Dégano et al. (Sat,) studied this question.