The narrow question facing leagues like the NBA, NFL and MLB when they returned to play in the past year was how common the heart damage would be among players who tested positive for Covid-19. They now have an encouraging answer: it is rare.
A new study on the subject in JAMA Cardiology is based on the performance of 789 professional athletes who tested positive for Covid-19 in Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the National Hockey League, National Football League and the men’s and women’s national basketball association.
The paper shows that 0.6% of athletes end up with findings indicative of inflammatory heart disease. Five athletes were kept out of competition due to their cardiac results. Three had myocarditis, that is, heart inflammation, and two had pericarditis, which swells in the tissue that surrounds the heart. All had moderate cases of Covid.
The findings suggest that long-term heart complications are unlikely in non-severe Covid cases – and that sports leagues are likely to continue with heart tests during the pandemic.
“There was a lot of fear during spring and summer about myocarditis in athletes,” said Dr. David Engel, associate professor of medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and one of the authors of the article. “It helps answer many of the uncertainties that have spread in the medical community about the prevalence of myocarditis in athletes or the general population in people with asymptomatic or mild form of Covid.”
The initial fear in the early days of the pandemic was mainly based on images of patients admitted to the hospital. Researchers have suspected that their hearts may look different from those of the many people who recovered at home. But they could not know for sure.
It was a difficult problem to analyze clinically because the different types of heart shields needed to study this phenomenon can be expensive and also tax on healthcare systems. The professional sports leagues, with tens of billions of dollars going on, helped provide the solution.
They not only tested athletes for Covid-19. They also tested their hearts.
The study concludes that performances – troponin blood tests, electrocardiograms and resting echocardiograms – are effective as they are expensive tools to intercept rare possibilities that can come at a tremendous price. Five professional athletes who have had heart attacks on tracks, fields and tracks would have been a disaster. Instead, the five athletes were asked to sit out for months after their investigations detected potential health issues.
No athletes in the study were identified, but some identified themselves as heart-related issues.. Boston Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez, for example, missed the 2020 season and said a show shows he had myocarditis.
“The message of the study is that a safe return to sport at the organizational level is possible if systematic and careful screening is performed,” said Dr. Engel, who has worked with the NBA on heart examinations for years.
The answer to the occurrence comes after cardiologists reassured the rest of the population that they generally do not have to fear hidden inflammation when returning to asymptomatic, mild, or even moderate cases of the virus.
This is because recreational athletes usually do not exercise under the same pressure as professionals and respond more reliably to warning signs such as breathing problems, dizziness or fainting, said Christopher Newton-Cheh, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Professional athletes are more vulnerable because they have a lot of incentives to really strive for themselves,” said Dr. “I think they need a little more guidance and caution … they’re more likely to divert it than a recreational athlete.”
He recommends that warriors who have not been hospitalized for the virus over the weekend resume exercise once 10 days have passed and Covid symptoms have disappeared, with the possible exception of loss of taste or smell, as long as they can go. on, acknowledge that they will not immediately be back in their pre-Covid state, and follow up on what they find.
People who struggle to perform normal activities, or have a moderately severe case and are older than 65 or have a history of cardiovascular disease, should do research before going back to exercise, said dr. Newton-Cheh said. Dr. Engel said that for people who experience significant symptoms, such as shortness of breath or chest pain, screening is “absolutely essential”.
Write to Andrew Beaton at [email protected] and Louise Radnofsky at [email protected]
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