CV & mental in COVID

With the COVID-19 pandemic lasting over a year and affecting all continents, a new problem has arisen, that of convalescents, who continue to have various symptoms at more than 4 and up to 12 weeks after the acute disease, the so called post-acute COVID-19 syndrome. In this article, we tried to determine, if previously healthy adults, with post-acute COVID-19 syndrome also have cardiac complications related to the number of persisting symptoms, the Quality of Life scores and the initial pulmonary injury. We evidenced, by transthoracic echocardiography, at about a quarter of the 150 participants in our study, cardiac abnormalities (pulmonary hypertension, systolic and diastolic dysfunction, pericarditis), their gravity being significantly correlated with the severity of COVID-19, the number of weeks passed since the acute illness, with the number of persisting symptoms, and the quality of life. Post-acute COVID-19 is a recently proposed term which aims to characterize the various symptoms persisting after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, their severity being explained partially, by residual multi-system alterations with important impact on the functional status and quality of life of the affected individuals.

"Victor Babes" University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timisoara, Romania