Covid and Heart

Demand Ischemia

• When Covid-19 affects your lungs, your oxygen supply is reduced. Heart has to work harder to supply oxygen to your body.
• When Covid-19 affects your heart directly, it reduces the pumping power of heart directly.
• Both conditions depend on how much cardiac reserve you have.
• In other words, more cardio-vascular fitness you have better is your odd against winning over Covid-19 heart.

Inflammation of Heart Muscle

• 1 in 5 patients with COVID-19 have signs of heart injury, regardless of whether they had respiratory symptoms  
• Inflammation of the heart muscle (myocarditis) can be part of generalized hyper-inflammation syndrome or localized inflammation of the heart muscle.

Direct Viral Infection of Heart

• Coronavirus can directly infect heart and blood vessels by binding on ACE2 receptors
• Infection of the heart muscle or blood vessel can be part of generalized Covid-19 infection as well
• The result is poor pumping power of the heart (cardiomyopathy)

Micro-vascular Thrombus or Embolism

• Excess of blood clotting (thrombus) and clot spreading (embolism) can affect any organ in the body
• Direct injury to the inner lining (endothelium) of blood vessels, stasis, easy clotting tendency (hyper-coagulability) is three key factors.
• Cytokine storm is the medical word used to describe this perfect storm