The Karaviti study is finally in print, which makes this a good time to revisit it. It shows that subclinical myocardial injury in children after COVID-19 may not be something exceptional🧵
The key point is often missed. This was not mainly a comparison of children with Long Covid versus children without Long Covid. It compared
children after COVID-19
healthy controls without prior SARS-CoV-2 exposure
In that comparison, conventional echocardiographic measures did not differ significantly, but the post-COVID group showed worse left ventricular global longitudinal strain (LV GLS).
LV GLS can detect subtle myocardial dysfunction even when standard cardiac measures still look normal. In other words - the study points to silent, subclinical cardiac changes rather than obvious heart disease.
In children after COVID-19, there was a statistically significant group level shift toward worse myocardial function compared with healthy controls!
Put more simply - children after COVID-19 showed subtle subclinical changes in cardiac function.
The cohort included 137 children in the post-COVID group and 79 healthy controls, assessed 3 to 12 months after infection.
Long-COVID symptoms were reported in 23.6% of the post-COVID group, with fatigue the most common. But that figure should not be confused with the cardiac findings. The symptom rate is not the same thing as the proportion with altered GLS.
And that distinction is crucial.
What the paper shows is that the post-COVID group as a whole was shifted toward worse values.
That is why this study matters. It does support the view that COVID-19 can leave persistent, clinically silent myocardial footprints even in pediatric populations.
Sum:
Compared with healthy controls, children after COVID-19 showed a statistically significant shift toward worse LV GLS values, consistent with subtle subclinical myocardial dysfunction.
An this is exactly why follow-up matters. If standard measures look normal while more sensitive markers still detect change, the absence of overt disease should not be mistaken for the absence of impact.
Karaviti at al., Long term cardiovascular effects on COVID-19 infection in children. The need for monitoring. internationaljournalofcardiology.com/article/S0167-…
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.