Cor Vasa 2020, 62(Suppl. 1):15-18 | DOI: 10.33678/cor.2020.042

(Specific SARS-CoV-2 myocarditis - does it exist?)

Jan Krejčí

I. interní kardioangiologická klinika, Lékařská fakulta Masarykovy univerzity a Fakultní nemocnice u sv. Anny v Brně

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a number of questions that do not have yet a clear answer. One of them is also the etiology of acute myocardial injury, which may be manifested only by troponin level elevation, but sometimes may be associated with the development of left ventricular dysfunction accompanied by symptoms of heart failure. Patients with myocardial injury have been reported to have a worse prognosis than patients with normal troponin levels. It is not clear whether this is the cause of a poor prognosis or the result of a severe course of the disease. It is also not clear what is the etiology of this condition. One of the possibilities is the development of myocarditis, an alternative explanation may be that myocardial damage is caused by a cytokine storm, similar to the so-called septic cardiomyopathy. In this article, some published case reports are briefly analyzed and based on them, the author does not assume that myocardial damage would be caused by specific SARS-CoV-2-induced myocarditis.

Keywords: Acute myocardial injury, COVID-19, Myocarditis, Septic cardiomyopathy

Received: May 12, 2020; Accepted: May 12, 2020; Published: June 22, 2020  Show citation