Myocarditis is rare in COVID-19 autopsies: cardiovascular findings across 277 postmortem examinations.
Cardiovasc Pathol
; 50: 107300, 2021.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1023486
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic, the result of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2, is a major cause of worldwide mortality with a significant cardiovascular component. While a number of different cardiovascular histopathologies have been reported at postmortem examination, their incidence is unknown, due to limited numbers of cases in any given study. A literature review was performed identifying 277 autopsied hearts across 22 separate publications of COVID-19 positive patients. The median age of the autopsy cohort was 75 and 97.6% had one or more comorbidities. Initial review of the data indicate that myocarditis was present in 20 hearts (7.2%); however, closer examination of additional reported information revealed that most cases were likely not functionally significant and the true prevalence of myocarditis is likely much lower (<2%). At least one acute, potentially COVID-19-related cardiovascular histopathologic finding, such as macro or microvascular thrombi, inflammation, or intraluminal megakaryocytes, was reported in 47.8% of cases. Significant differences in reporting of histopathologic findings occurred between studies indicating strong biases in observations and the need for more consistency in reporting. In conclusion, across 277 cases, COVID-19-related cardiac histopathological findings, are common, while myocarditis is rare.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
COVID-19
/
Myocarditis
/
Myocardium
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Reviews
Topics:
Long Covid
Limits:
Adult
/
Aged
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
/
Young adult
Language:
English
Journal:
Cardiovasc Pathol
Journal subject:
Vascular Diseases
/
Cardiology
/
Pathology
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS