ABSTRACT
Aims: Cardiovascular sequelae may occur in patients recovered from COVID-19. Recent studies have detected a considerable incidence of subclinical myocardial dysfunction - assessed with speckle-tracking echocardiography - and of long-COVID symptoms in these patients. This study aimed to define the long-term prognostic role of subclinical myocardial dysfunction and long-COVID condition in patients recovered from COVID-19 pneumonia. Methods and Results: We prospectively followed-up 110 patients hospitalized at our Institution due to COVID-19 pneumonia in April 2020 and then recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection. A 6-month clinical and echocardiographic evaluation was performed, followed by a 21-month clinical follow-up. The primary outcome was major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), a composite of myocardial infarction, stroke, heart failure hospitalization and all-cause mortality. A subclinical myocardial dysfunction - defined as an impairment of left ventricular global longitudinal strain (>= -18%) - was identified at 6-month follow-up in 37 patients (34%), was associated with an increased risk of long-term MACE with a good discriminative power (AUC: 0.73) and resulted a strong independent predictor of extended MACE in a multivariate regression analysis (OR 9.29, 95%CI 2.20-39.3, p=0.002). Long-COVID condition was not associated with a worse long-term prognosis, instead. Conclusion(s): In patients recovered from COVID-19 pneumonia, a subclinical myocardial dysfunction is present in one third of the whole population at 6-month followup and is associated with a higher risk of MACE at long-term follow-up. Speckle-tracking echocardiography is a promising tool to optimise the riskstratification in patients recovered from COVID-19 pneumonia, while the definition of a long-COVID condition has not prognostic relevance.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: Italy has been the first affected country in the western haemisphere by SARS-COV 2 with over 200.000 cases during the first months o the pandemica. To control the spread of the virus, the whole country was placed under lockdown with limitations in the circulation of people and vehicles from March 2020 to the first half of the month of May. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We aimed to analyze the incidence and type of facial traumas referred to our tertiary care hospital during the months of Italy lockdown due to SARS - COVID 2 spread compared with those during the same months of 2019 to determine eventual variations in the incidence, type and causes of trauma. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: During the 2 months of COVID-19-related lockdown, a dramatic decrease in facial trauma patients was observed at our tertiary care hospital with a shift toward older age ranges. Regarding the causes of trauma, the largest percentage reduction was found in road, sports and work accidents;this percentage reduction was not found in aggressions. A small increase in the percentage was also found regarding surgical indications, likely because more severe cases were more prone to be referred to the hospital despite the fear of being infected.