Reuters: Higher risk of heart complications from COVID-19 than vaccines – study. “COVID-19 infections are more likely to trigger rare cardiovascular complications such as heart inflammation and irregular heartbeat than vaccines, a British study showed on Tuesday, after scientists parsed data of about 38 million vaccinated people.”
British Heart Foundation: Leading charities and health organisations urge people to register their defibrillators on new database to help save lives. “To help save more lives we, alongside Resuscitation Council UK, St John Ambulance and Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, we are urging people who look after defibrillators in places such as offices, communities, shopping centres and leisure centres, as well as in public places, to register them on a pioneering database called The Circuit: The national defibrillator network.”
Bloomberg: Heart damage plagues COVID-19 survivors a year after infection, study shows. “Heart damage from Covid-19 extends well beyond the disease’s initial stages, according to a study that found even people who were never sick enough to need hospitalization are in danger of developing heart failure and deadly blood clots a year later. Heart disease and stroke are already the leading causes of death worldwide. The increased likelihood of lethal heart complications in Covid survivors – who number in the hundreds of millions globally – will add to its devastation, according to the study, which is under consideration for publication by a Nature journal.”
New York Times: Heart Problem More Common After Covid-19 Than After Vaccination, Study Finds. “The Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine is associated with an increased risk of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, a large new study from Israel confirms. But the side effect remains rare, and Covid-19 is more likely to cause myocarditis than the vaccine is, scientists reported on Wednesday.”
The Straits Times: Singapore researchers invent new AI tool that could speed up diagnosis of heart disease . “A new tool that could lead to faster diagnosis of heart disease has been invented by researchers in Singapore. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), it uses electrocardiograms (ECGs) and has an accuracy rate of 98.5 percent. ECGs measure the electrical activity of heartbeats to detect heart abnormalities.”
UT San Antonio Health: Post-COVID syndrome severely damages children’s hearts; ‘immense inflammation’ causing cardiac blood vessel dilation. “Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), believed to be linked to COVID-19, damages the heart to such an extent that some children will need lifelong monitoring and interventions, said the senior author of a medical literature review published Sept. 4 in EClinicalMedicine, a journal of The Lancet.”
Centre Daily Times: PSU football doctor: 30-35 percent of COVID-19-positive Big Ten athletes had myocarditis. “During a State College Area school board of directors meeting on Monday night, Wayne Sebastianelli — Penn State’s director of athletic medicine — made some alarming comments about the link between COVID-19 and myocarditis, particularly in Big Ten athletes. Sebastianelli said that cardiac MRI scans revealed that approximately a third of Big Ten athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 appeared to have myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can be fatal if left unchecked.”
ScienceDaily: ‘Selfies’ could be used to detect heart disease. “Sending a ‘selfie’ to the doctor could be a cheap and simple way of detecting heart disease, according to the authors of a new study published today (Friday) in the European Heart Journal. The study is the first to show that it’s possible to use a deep learning computer algorithm to detect coronary artery disease (CAD) by analysing four photographs of a person’s face.”
Daily Beast: Is COVID-19 Creating a Generation of Heart Failure Patients?. “Two studies published Monday provide the strongest evidence yet that some patients who survive the respiratory ravages of COVID-19 may suffer long-lasting heart problems—the latest indication that the fallout from the pandemic goes well beyond the death toll.”
Newsweek: Scans Reveal Heart Damage in Over Half of COVID-19 Patients in Study. “The study involved 1,216 patients, of whom 813 had been diagnosed with COVID-19, and 298 were deemed probable cases. Due to the design of the study, the remaining 105 were assumed to have COVID-19, the co-authors told Newsweek. The participants were from 69 countries across six continents. They each had an echocardiogram, a type of ultrasound scan for the heart, between April 3 and 20.”
Washington Post: Heart conditions drove spike in deaths beyond those attributed to covid-19, analysis shows. “The coronavirus killed tens of thousands in the United States during the pandemic’s first months, but it also left a lesser-known toll: thousands more deaths than would have been expected from heart disease and a handful of other medical conditions, according to an analysis of federal data by The Washington Post.”
Johns Hopkins University: JHU researchers to use machine learning to predict heart damage in COVID-19 victims. “Johns Hopkins researchers recently received a $195,000 Rapid Response Research grant from the National Science Foundation to, using machine learning, identify which COVID-19 patients are at risk of adverse cardiac events such as heart failure, sustained abnormal heartbeats, heart attacks, cardiogenic shock and death. Increasing evidence of COVID-19’s negative impacts on the cardiovascular system highlights a great need for identifying COVID-19 patients at risk for heart problems, the researchers say. However, no such predictive capabilities currently exist.”
Quartz: Alphabet’s Verily and Google found a potential new test for heart disease using AI. “Researchers were able to find new indicators of heart disease risk present in pictures of retinas by analyzing them with artificial intelligence, according to a paper published Thursday by researchers at Google and Verily, which has not been peer reviewed. Doctors today rely heavily on blood tests to determine risk of heart disease; a potential test based on retinal images would be less invasive, easier to obtain, and faster to analyze with AI.”
This is fascinating! In development: a digital library of artery sounds. “The grant will enable the construction of a digital database of the different foot and leg artery sounds – plus sounds from the groin and behind the knee – recorded during the Doppler ultrasound procedure. [Andrew Sharpe] will then select the best and most representative sounds and hold discussions with expert clinicians on how to interpret them. Case histories accompanying each sound will form part of his library, which will be obtainable via the web. It is also planned to develop a smartphone app.”
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