Cardiologist says Covid can masquerade as heart attack
SOME cases of Covid-19 “masquerade” as heart attacks, said one of Ireland’s top cardiologists.
Treating heart attacks during the coronavirus pandemic has extra challenges as it had to be assumed patients presenting with suspected heart attacks may have Covid-19, said Professor Robert Byrne (44), director of cardiology at the Mater Private Hospital, Dublin, and chair of cardiovascular research at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
“In the early stages of the pandemic I would have had close contact with many researchers in northern Italy and they were telling us they were seeing cases of Covid that are masquerading as heart attacks,” he said.
“So the patient would come in with symptoms and they would do an ECG and it would look like a major heart attack and they would rush them to the catheterisation lab.
“A proportion were indeed having a major heart attack but in a higher proportion than usual, when they did the angiogram, they found the coronary arteries weren’t blocked.
“So this is something you can imagine that complicates the whole workflow of these patients. There have been cases like this in Ireland and it is something that people just have to be cognisant of.
“We arranged a web conference with colleagues in Italy about this.
“Among the new things in our work since Covid came is the web conference and the sharing of expertise across national borders has been a critical component of the response to the coronavirus pandemic,” he said.
Dr Byrne urged people concerned about strokes or heart issues not to delay in seeking medical assistance.
He said there had been fears in the early stages of the pandemic about increased levels of deaths not related to Covid.
“However, this expected surge in deaths not directly related to coronavirus did not seem to materialise and, if present at all, likely represented less than 10pc of the number of coronavirus-related deaths.”
He added that cardiologists now conduct a great many ‘virtual’ consultations with patients. And patients were making more use of smartphone apps in monitoring their heart health while many tests were being combined in a single hospital visit.
Dr Byrne took up his roles in Ireland in November, having worked as deputy director of cardiology at the German Heart Centre in Munich.