[ad_1]
Click to enlarge
NEXT
Adam Millar was 18 when he started having a cold that would not go away.
It was the middle of the hockey season, so he wiped out his symptoms. After what seemed like two or three months of coughing and fatigue, his cold progressed. “I didn’t even have the energy to brush my teeth,” he told USA TODAY.
Millar’s heart was broken, he found out later. Heart failure – often caused by myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle – is a rare condition in adolescents and young adults. It is more common in older people, often due to decreased heart function over a period of years.
Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox every morning.
Yet since the start of the pandemic, a very small subset of young people infected with COVID-19 have developed heart failure.
Yes, children can get COVID-19: More than a million people have been infected in the United States since the start of the pandemic, according to a report
This summer, doctors in New York City reported that a 2-month-old boy diagnosed with COVID-19 later suffered from heart failure, reporting another complication of COVID-19 in children.
The boy was choking, later turning blue, despite no fever, cough or other sign of infection, the doctors reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
This infant represents the youngest known case of myocarditis caused by COVID-19, Dr. Madhu Sharma told MedPage Today. Sharma is a doctor at Montefiore Children’s Hospital in New York City and contributed to the case report.
But this is not the first case of myocarditis in young people previously infected with COVID-19.
Twenty-six Ohio State University athletes with confirmed COVID-19 – who were mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic – underwent cardiac tests. Nearly 50% had cardiac abnormalities and 15% met criteria for myocarditis, according to an OSU study in September.
The roots of heart failure caused by COVID-19 lie in multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, says Dr. Gary Stapleton, pediatric interventional cardiologist at Texas Children’s Hospital. MIS-C made headlines in 2020 when a small number of children with COVID-19 began to have inflammation of the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes or of the gastrointestinal organs. The condition generally responds well to treatment.
© Provided by USA TODAY
President Donald Trump is critical of the CDC’s guidelines for the upcoming school year, which includes children, teachers and staff who are regularly tested for COVID-19.
While sometimes the heart inflammation in these cases is mild, “it can be quite severe where they require intensive care admission and a lot of medication and support,” Stapleton said.
Most children with COVID-19 do not develop the inflammatory disease. When they do, they tend to get it about four to six weeks after their initial infection. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been approximately 1,200 cases of MIS-C in the United States and 20 deaths, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“We have no way of predicting who is really going to get sick and who isn’t,” Stapleton said. Yet, if not recognized and treated, MIS-C can lead to significant complications.
The first thing parents can pay attention to? Any change or disruption in their child’s normal routine, Stapleton said.
If teens have fatigue, cardio-pulmonary problems such as difficulty breathing or gastrointestinal illness, Stapleton recommends seeing their doctor.
Pandemic parenting: Experts say this is what children need to survive the COVID-19 era
MIS-C and heart failure are not a death sentence for young people. Treatment can include a variety of medical and mechanical interventions. In June, the Food and Drug Administration issued emergency use authorization for the Impella device, the world’s smallest heart pump.
Yet heart failure can be a heartbreaking experience.
Millar, now 21, is a freshman at Northeastern University. He has since recovered from his condition, but said it was a “very rude wake-up call”.
“I was an athlete who ran for five minutes and then I was bedridden, lost 70 pounds and was told my life had changed forever,” Millar said. “We just need to start listening to our bodies.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Heart Failure in Children: Another Rare Complication of COVID-19. Here’s what to look for.
[ad_2]
Source link