According to a new study, in the year following a COVID-19 infection, patients experience an increased risk of developing no less than twenty different cardiac problems!
The study comes from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the authors estimate that infections with the virus have caused around 3 million cases of heart disease only in the United States!
The problems apparently directly linked to COVID-19 infections include heart attacks, strokes, irregular heart rhythms and myocarditis.
The same research also noted that even healthy and younger people were at an increased risk and so were those who did not have such serious COVID cases that they were in need of hospitalization.
For instance, Dr. Evelina Grayver became a patient in her very own heart program at Northwell Health in New York last year after testing positive for COVID-19.
It was so bad that Grayver, who is also a marathon runner, could no longer even climb up a flight of stairs!
During an interview for CBS News, she shared that “I literally felt like I had just ran a marathon, my heart was just racing. I decided to no longer act as my own doctor and actually seek other medical help.”
Grayver had long COVID and was also diagnosed with an inflammation of the heart muscle also known as myocarditis.
The issue was so serious that her heart was failing to pump blood normally, which is obviously a really big problem that can even lead to death.
She went on to share about the experience that “It was very scary. We know the risk of myocarditis is sudden cardiac death. My first night was the scariest one. I kept on thinking to myself, ‘Please, please just let me wake up in the morning.'”
Now, Grayver is concerned that patients who have been infected with COVID-19 will experience increased risks of cardiac issues as well, given what she and other experts have been able to observe at this point.
“We are literally only now beginning to scratch the surface of it all.”
