![]() “I do have a number of patients who continue to struggle with that. “They may have a persistent disability that takes a long time to get through,” Altman said. If patients clear those tests, a difficult path sometimes lies before them. “For example, we want to ensure that they don’t have inflammation of their heart, that their lungs are working well, and that they have no heart rhythm problems.” “We first make sure that we rule out any other underlying causes of their symptoms,” Altman said. There are no shortcuts to helping patients with the problem. “They are just completely wiped out, and that takes a long time to get better,” Altman added. A simple walk or five minutes on an exercise bike can leave people fatigued, short of breath and complaining of chest pain. “It’s younger people who are completely exhausted after a minimal amount of exertion,” Altman said. What has been the biggest challenge in helping patients with long COVID? Simply put, “Trying to avoid infection overall is preferable,” Altman said. Vaccination, while not 100% effective, offers further protection against those uncertainties. “But we don’t how many of those folks and which ones are going to develop long-term symptoms,” she said. We try to piece it all together.”Īltman emphasized that younger people who are healthy are at lower risk of developing severe complications after COVID. We can help to determine how much of the problem is heart- and lung-related, how much is deconditioning, how much is related to other potential issues. These are the patients who can really benefit from seeing us in the multidisciplinary clinic. “Some of these are people in their 20s and 30s who were perfectly healthy before COVID – mountain bikers and hikers who are now completely debilitated. “I have seen patients with very mild symptoms who weeks later started to develop chest pain, heart palpitations and difficulty breathing with exertion,” Altman said. ![]() Are you seeing patients who had mild to moderate COVID symptoms but show signs of long COVID? Given that prospect, it’s vital for all people with any condition that heightens the high risk of complications from COVID to get vaccinated, Altman said. “These patients are at a higher risk of hospitalization, persistent illness and potentially death.” Altman added that people with a preexisting heart condition – heart failure and coronary artery disease, for example – generally have “a rough course” of recovery from COVID-19 and can be at greater risk for lung disease, blood clots and heart attacks. “COVID in patients with underlying heart disease is a known risk factor for complications,” Altman said. Does everyone with cardiac-related post-COVID issues have long COVID? She said she sees five to six patients a week with a variety of post-COVID cardiac symptoms. “It is hard to estimate an overall prevalence in the era of the omicron variant,” Altman said. Natasha Altman provides care for long COVID patients with heart-related symptoms through the UCHealth Post-COVID Clinic. Do you have a sense of the prevalence of long COVID? Dr. “The most common are chest pain, abnormally high heart rates, heart palpitations, shortness of breath and difficulty doing the same exercises people were doing prior to having COVID,” Altman said. What are the most common symptoms you see in long COVID patients? Altman provides heart care for long COVID patients at the Post-COVID Clinic. Natasha Altman, an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology specialist with the Heart Failure Clinic at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital on the Anschutz Medical Campus. They therefore benefit from multidisciplinary care, which is available at the UCHealth Post-COVID Clinic. Long COVID patients, or “long haulers,” battle symptoms that include chest pain, chronic fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, nerve problems, anxiety and depression, joint and muscle pain and more. These individuals are the victims of long COVID, defined by the CDC as conditions patients experience four or more weeks after recovering from a COVID-19 infection. Many recover initially from COVID-19 only to suffer weeks later from sometimes confounding symptoms that can affect all parts of the body. Photo by Getty Images.Ĭhest pain after COVID-19 is among the concerning symptoms cardiologists are seeing, even as hospitalizations from the latest surge of COVID-19 cases recede. Cardiologists urge patients who experience chest pain after recovering from COVID 19 to seek medical care.
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