MONDAY, March 7, 2022 (HealthDay Information) — Individuals who had been born with a coronary heart defect have a virtually doubled danger for extreme COVID-19 sickness or dying and must get vaccinated, put on masks and take different steps to guard themselves, researchers report.
These sufferers on the highest danger for extreme COVID-19 had been 50 and older, males, and people with different well being circumstances corresponding to coronary heart failure, pulmonary hypertension, Down syndrome, diabetes or weight problems, in keeping with the examine.
“Individuals with heart defects needs to be inspired to obtain the COVID-19 vaccines and boosters and to proceed to follow further preventive measures for COVID-19, corresponding to mask-wearing and bodily distancing,” stated examine creator Karrie Downing. She’s an epidemiologist on the U.S. Nationwide Middle on Start Defects and Developmental Disabilities and the COVID-19 Response Staff on the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
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“Individuals with coronary heart defects must also seek the advice of with their well being care groups about further steps to handle private dangers associated to COVID-19, given the considerably elevated danger of extreme an infection and critical problems,” Downing added.
The examine analyzed knowledge on greater than 235,600 hospitalized COVID-19 sufferers in the USA collected from March 2020 to January 2021. Of these sufferers, 0.2% had a congenital coronary heart defect.
Whereas 68% of the COVID-19 sufferers with a coronary heart defect additionally had at the least one different well being situation, the speed was 59% amongst these with no congenital coronary heart defect.
The examine discovered that 54% of these with congenital coronary heart defects and 43% of these with no defect had been admitted to intensive care; 24% of these with congenital coronary heart defects and 15% of these with no defect required a ventilator to breathe, and 11% of these with congenital coronary heart defects and seven% of these with no defect died throughout hospitalization.
Sufferers with congenital coronary heart defects remained at excessive danger for extreme COVID-19 even once they had been divided into classes by age or different well being circumstances.
The findings had been revealed March 7 within the journal Circulation.
“Extra work is required to establish why the medical course of COVID-19 illness leads to considerably worse outcomes for some hospitalized sufferers with danger elements for vital COVID-19 sickness, like coronary heart defects, and never for others,” Downing stated in a journal information launch.
There are greater than a dozen kinds of congenital heart defects, that are the commonest delivery defects worldwide with a prevalence of 157 per 100,000 in 2017, in keeping with the American Coronary heart Affiliation.
There’s extra on congenital coronary heart defects on the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
SOURCE: Circulation, information launch, March 7, 2022
This text initially ran on consumer.healthday.com.