In a new study, researchers found that when a patient is hospitalized with COVID-19, signs of damage to the right side of the heart may indicate a greater risk of death.
Doctors commonly assess lung X-rays, medical history, blood-oxygen levels, blood markers of inflammation, and other indicators to determine which incoming COVID-19 patients are most at risk of developing severe disease.
In the study, the researchers examined 510 COVID-19 patients. The average age of the patients was 64, and two-thirds were male.
They found that signs of damage to the heart’s right ventricle on an echocardiogram are another strong and predictor of severe COVID-19 disease.
Patients who had signs of impaired right ventricle pumping capacity were on average two and a half times more likely to die from COVID-19 during their hospitalization.
The findings suggest that physicians should consider looking for such damage using a readily available and non-invasive ultrasound test called an echocardiogram.
The research was conducted by a team at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian.
The heart’s right ventricle is the pump that pushes blood into the lungs to be oxygenated.
Doctors have long known that problems affecting lung function, including inflammation triggered by respiratory viruses, can stress and impair this pump, usually by increasing the lungs’ resistance to blood flow.
But the team believes the new study is the first to show that such an impairment is an independent predictor of COVID-19 mortality risk, with a predictive value over and above that of other risk markers.
The findings support the wider use of cardiovascular imaging to assess the risk of severe COVID-19 and to tailor patient care accordingly, the researchers say.
One author of the study is Dr. Jiwon Kim, an associate professor of medicine.
The study is published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
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