Heart Failure and COVID-19

July 27, 2020

Feras Bader, Yosef Manla, Bassam Atallah, Randall C Starling.

Heart Failure Reviews

Heart failure is a disease state that can be found in the different stages of a COVID-19 patient. A patient with pre-existing heart failure and with a new presentation can be a challenge for many institutions as it tends to impact the prognosis of the patients. Mortality in patients with heart failure is 3 times higher than in patients without this history. Because abnormal cardiac biomarkers are common in COVID-19, it can be challenging to differentiate between pre-existing heart disease or COVID-19 biomarker elevation which may be due to various mechanisms such as viral entry through ACE2 receptors, direct heart damage from the virus, increased thrombotic activity, and / or stress-generated cardiomyopathy. There is a complementary interaction between heart failure medications and infection. The authors recommend that treatment for heart failure should continue, however more studies are needed to evaluate the pathophysiology in this area. It would be desirable to have a follow-up in patients of this type.

Bader, F., Manla, Y., Atallah, B. et al. Heart failure and COVID-19. Heart Fail Rev 26, 1–10 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10741-020-10008-2

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