A new study found that people with congenital heart defects were more likely to get sick or die from COVID-19 infection than people without.

People with a congenital heart defect who were hospitalized with COVID-19 infection had a higher risk of severe illness or death than those without a heart defect, says a new study.

People who have a congenital heart defect and contract COVID-19 are more likely to require therapy in an intensive care unit (ICU) or to require a ventilator, according to the findings of the research.

The study found that patients with a heart problem and other health issues, those over 50, and men were at the highest risk of developing serious COVID-19 illnesses.

There are over a dozen different types of congenital cardiac abnormalities, which occur when the heart or nearby blood arteries do not grow normally before birth. Congenital heart defects are the most prevalent birth defect globally, according to the American Heart Association’s Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics—2022 Update, with a global frequency of 157 per 100,000 in 2017.

In this study, the team looked at data from hospitalized COVID-19 patients from March 2020 to January 2021, which was collected in the Premier Healthcare Database Special COVID-19 Release, which represents around 20% of all hospitalizations in the United States. COVID-19 patients with and without heart defects were treated in the same hospitals in this study. Age, gender, race/ethnicity, health insurance types, and other high-risk conditions (such as heart failure, pulmonary hypertension, Down syndrome, diabetes, and obesity) were all taken into account.

Over 235,000 individuals, ranging in age from 1 to 64, were hospitalized for COVID-19 during this time period, according to the database. Patients were separated into two groups: those with and without a congenital heart disease. Researchers next looked at how many of these people needed to be admitted to the ICU, needed a ventilator to assist them breathe, or died. Other variables, such as other health issues, were also examined by the researchers.

421 (0.2 percent) of the 235,638 COVID-19 hospitalized patients analyzed for this study had a congenital cardiac abnormality. According to the findings of the investigation:

• The majority of patients with a heart defect were over the age of 30 (73 percent) and were male (61 percent). Non-Hispanic white people made up 55 percent, Hispanic people made up 19 percent, and non-Hispanic Black people made up 16 percent.
• In all, 68 percent of patients with a heart defect had at least one other health condition, compared to 59 percent of those who did not have a congenital heart defect.
• In comparison, only 43 percent of individuals without congenital heart defects were admitted to the ICU, whereas 54 percent of those with a congenital heart problem were admitted.
• 24 percent of patients with a congenital heart problem required the use of a ventilator to breathe, compared to 15 percent of patients without a congenital heart disease.
• During hospitalization, 11% of patients with a congenital heart problem died, compared to 7% of patients without a congenital heart disease.

Furthermore, even when separated into categories based on age or other health factors indicated in the study, those with congenital heart defects remained at high risk for severe COVID-19 sickness, according to the researchers.

As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to evolve, Downing believes these findings have direct, practical importance for health care practitioners and “people with heart defects should be encouraged to receive the COVID-19 vaccines and boosters and to continue to practice additional preventive measures for COVID-19, such as mask-wearing and physical distancing.”

This research has a number of limitations. Only people who had already been hospitalized with COVID-19 were included in the study. The clinical details about the underlying heart defect were not available, and lab tests to identify and confirm COVID-19 diagnoses may vary from hospital to hospital. Since the vaccines will only be accessible in the US in December 2020, COVID-19 vaccination status was not taken into account.

Source: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.057833

Image Credit: Getty

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