Post-COVID-19 Cardiomyopathy in Children and Adults: Fact or Fiction?

Since the emergence of the novel coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19), cardiovascular impairment and alterations in cardiology laboratory tests suggestive of myocardial injury, even in patients without cardiovascular symptoms, have been observed in hospitalized children and adults.^–

Epidemiological data from China have suggested that cardiac injury may occur in 19% to 28% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Several factors seem to contribute to myocardial damage, and potential mechanisms of injury include: hypoxic injury, stress cardiomyopathy, ischemic lesion caused by cardiac microvascular dysfunction, small vessel cardiac vasculitis, endotheliitis, epicardial coronary artery disease, right heart distention (acute cor pulmonale with pulmonary embolism), myocarditis, systemic inflammatory response syndrome (cytokine storm), and others ^, ().

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