The terrifying question that leagues like the NBA, NFL and MLB faced when they played again over the past year was the prevalence of heart damage among players who tested positive for Covid-19. Now they have an encouraging answer: it’s rare.
A new study on the subject at JAMA Cardiology is based on the projection of 789 professional athletes who tested positive for Covid-19 between May and October in major league baseball, major league football, national hockey leagues, national football and men’s leagues. and the National Women’s Basketball Association.
The paper shows that 0.6% of these athletes ultimately had findings that suggest inflammatory heart disease. Five athletes were left out of competition due to their cardiac results. Three had myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart, and two had pericarditis, which is inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart. They had all had moderate cases of Covid.
The findings suggest that long-term cardiac complications are unlikely to occur in non-severe Covid cases, and that sports leagues will continue with cardiac screening tests during the pandemic.
“There was a lot of fear during the spring and summer for myocarditis in athletes,” said Dr. David Engel, an associate professor of medicine at Columbia Medical Center Irving University and one of the authors of the paper. “It helps address many of the uncertainties circulating in the medical community about the prevalence of myocarditis for athletes or the general population for people with asymptomatic or mild forms of Covid.”
This initial fear of the early days of the pandemic was based primarily on images from hospitalized patients. The researchers suspected that their hearts might look different from those of many people who recovered from the virus at home. But they had no way of knowing for sure.
It was a difficult problem to analyze clinically because the various forms of cardiac screening required to study this phenomenon can be both costly and taxable in healthcare systems. Professional sports leagues, with tens of billions of dollars on the line, helped provide the solution.
Not only did they test athletes for Covid-19. They also tested his heart.
The study concludes that screenings — troponin blood tests, electrocardiograms, and resting echocardiograms — are effective if the tools to intercept rare possibilities that can lead to a terrible price are expensive. Five professional athletes who had heart incidents on tracks, fields and tracks would have been a catastrophe. Instead, these five athletes were asked to sit for months after their screenings detected possible health problems.
No athletes from the study were identified, but some have been identified as close to heart-related problems. Boston Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez, for example, missed the 2020 season and has said a screening showed he had myocarditis.
“The messages from the study are that a safe return to sport is possible at the organizational level if systematic and careful screening is done,” said Dr. Engel, who has been working with the NBA on cardiac screening for years.
The response to prevalence comes after cardiologists have assured the rest of the population that they generally do not need to fear hidden inflammation when they return to exercise after asymptomatic, mild, or even moderate cases of the virus.
This is because recreational athletes typically do not exercise under the same pressure as professionals and respond more reliably to warning signs such as difficulty breathing, dizziness, or fainting senses, said Christopher Newton-Cheh. cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Professional athletes are more vulnerable because they have a lot of incentives to really push themselves,” Dr. Newton-Cheh said. “I think they require a little more guidance and caution … they’re more likely to redefine it than a recreational athlete.”
He advises that weekend warriors who have not been hospitalized for the virus be able to exercise again after 10 days and that Covid’s symptoms have disappeared, with the possible exception of loss of taste or smell, as long as they can go slowly. . acknowledge that they will not immediately return to their pre-coveted condition and keep track of what they find.
People who have difficulty performing normal activities, or who have a moderately severe case and are over 65 or have a history of cardiovascular disease, should be tested before exercising again, Dr. Newton-Cheh said. Dr. Engel said that for people who have significant symptoms, such as difficulty breathing or chest pain, tests are “absolutely necessary.”
Write to Andrew Beaton at [email protected] and Louise Radnofsky at [email protected]
Copyright © 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8