Covid recovered patients should avoid immediate high-intensity activities
With 8 months into the Covid-19 pandemic, the new developments and
scientific research papers have shown that the highly infectious disease
affects not only the lungs, but many organs in the body including the
heart.
Recently, while speaking during the weekly ‘National
Clinical Grand Round’ held in collaboration with the Niti Aayog, AIIMS
Director Dr Randeep Guleria said that while pulmonary manifestations
were dominant in most of the Covid-19 cases, there were still a
significant number of patients who presented extrapulmonary
manifestations, which might or might not have been alongside pulmonary
issues.
Previously believed to be viral pneumonia, researchers
and doctors have now known that SARS CoV-2 can also invade heart muscle
cells.
According to a report published in The Lancet Child & Adolescents
Health, doctors in Brazil found the virus in cardiac myocytes of an
11-year-old with multisystem inflammatory syndrome related to Covid-19
who died of heart failure.
In Italy, six adults who died of Covid-19 respiratory failure had active coronavirus
in cardiac myocytes, with varying degrees of myocyte injury and cell
death, doctors report on Wednesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review.
None of these Italian patients had cardiac symptoms or a history of heart disease.
Interventional Cardiologist Dr. Ranjan Shetty, who has been treating Covid patients
at Manipal Hospitals said Covid-19 affects the heart muscle, also
produces blood clotting, breathlessness, heart attack like presentation
and lung-related problems, said
The new findings indicate that
Covid-19 patients should be monitored for heart problems even when they
do not appear to be at risk.
Sharing his experience, Dr Shetty
warned people not to neglect their heart health as some symptoms persist
up to four to six weeks after their hospital discharge. "Some of the
patients come back with lung, heart and clotting issues" he added.
Covid-19
is known to be thrombogenic, thus a D -dimer test is recommended at the
time of discharge to determine the presence of any abnormal clot or
thrombus.
Patients recovering from Covid need to be cautious and avoid indulging in any high-intensity activities immediately. “There should be a slow and gradual increase as the body is recovering from a major infectious disease,” he said.
labels- COVID-19, recovered, patients, avoid, high-intensity activities, abnormal clot, thrombus, D-dimer test, not neglect, heart health, breathlessness, cardiac myocytes, heart attack,