The increased cardiovascular risk recorded for Covid-19 patients may not be limited to the acute phase of the infection, but may extend over time, at least for 3 years. These are the results of the study, published in ‘Cardiovascular Research’, conducted by researchers from Irccs San Raffaele in Rome in collaboration with colleagues from the Sapienza universities of Rome and Federico II universities in Naples. The investigation was carried out on a sample of approximately 229 thousand patients, including approximately 32 thousand who had a molecular diagnosis of Covid-19, in a region – Campania – at moderate cardiovascular risk according to the European Score classification.
Risk of heart attack and stroke
Several studies, on a limited number of hospitalized people, have shown that Sars-CoV-2 infection is very often associated with the development of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events. The importance of this new work lies in the fact that it examines a large real population. In fact, it involves people coming from a database of general practitioners of the ASL 1 of Naples, followed for 3 years, during the pandemic in the period 2020-22, and compared with a pre-pandemic population derived from the same database in the period 2017-19. “The results showed that the group infected with the virus had approximately double the cases of myocardial infarction, cerebral stroke, heart failure, atrial fibrillation and myopericarditis“, explained Massimo Volpe, head of the Center for the diagnosis and treatment of arterial hypertension and cardiovascular complications at San Raffaele, one of the signatories of the study.
An increased risk, in short, that “in the population affected by the pandemic virus it lasts for at least 3 years. The significant clinical and social impact therefore requires particular attention towards subjects affected by Covid-19 who must be followed over time, due to the possible development of cardiovascular diseases”, added Volpe. The researchers, based on the results of the study , therefore invite the planning of a longer follow-up for patients with Covid-19, to prevent and promptly manage possible serious cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events.
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