The newness of COVID-19 has presented doctors and researchers with the task of gaining knowledge and understanding of the virus and its effects as rapidly as possible. This includes everything from how the virus affects the body to how to treat it to the long-term effects patients who have contracted it may experience.

With so many unknowns surrounding COVID-19, studies are being conducted left and right in an attempt to find the answers everyone is relying on. This is especially true of the complications associated with infection.

COVID-19 has been observed to cause cardiovascular complications, including serious events such as ischemic strokes, myocardial infarctions, and pulmonary embolisms. To ascertain just how frequently these adverse outcomes occur, as well as what may contribute to them, a multicenter study was recently conducted.

The Study

1,114 COVID-19 patients were analyzed in retrospect to assess how frequently arterial and venous thromboembolic disease occurred, what the risk factors were, what the outcomes were, and what prevention or management patterns existed.

Patients were divided into groups based upon where they were cared for—intensive care, hospitalized but not in intensive care, or outpatient. Researchers were most concerned with a composite of adjudicated major arterial or venous thromboembolism.

Among these patients, diabetes (18%), hyperlipidemia (28.6%), and hypertension (35.8%) were common. 89.4% of patients in intensive care and 84.7% of those hospitalized but not in intensive care received prophylactic anticoagulation.

Findings

The intensive care cohort experienced the highest rate of major arterial or venous thromboembolism (35.3%), major cardiovascular adverse events (45.9%), and symptomatic venous thromboembolism (27%). The hospitalized but not in intensive care cohort experienced these outcomes at far less frequent rates (2.6%, 6.1%, and 2.2%, respectively), while the outpatient cohort did not experience any of these outcomes.

What it Means

COVID-19 patients with severe cases experienced a high frequency of major arterial or venous thromboembolism, major adverse cardiovascular events, and symptomatic venous thromboembolism. This was especially true of patients requiring intensive care, even when they received thromboprophylaxis.

In other words, cardiovascular complications are common in patients with severe cases of COVID-19. It must be noted that many patients had certain risk factors, as well, including diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension, which could have contributed to the severity of their case and adverse outcomes.

Doctors should be aware of these risk factors and the positive correlation between the severity of the COVID-19 case and adverse cardiovascular outcomes when treating COVID-19 patients.