The Covid-19 pandemic continues to dominate headlines in the U.S. and around the world.
For those of us in healthcare that have followed the disease, there is a term called "Long Haulers Syndrome" or a similar name. It used to describe those individuals who have recovered from infection, but continue to have strange and often debilitating symptoms.
Now comes news that a Covid19 infection may put suffers at risk of heart attack and stroke. In a study conducted in Sweden that had a fairly large sample size. It compared 86,7423 people who suffered a Covid-19 infection to 348,481 people who did not.
It was discovered that the week after being diagnosed with Covid-19, the risk of a first time heart attack increased 300 to 800% while the stroke risk in the same population increased 300 to 600%. After that first week, the chances then dropped but stayed at increased levels for a minimum of four weeks.
This study did NOT include any patients who had suffered a heart attack or a stroke in the past. However, the study's coauthor Dr. Anne-Marie Fors Connolly suspected that for those in that category the risk may be even greater. I could not find out what she was basing that information on.
Often times with clinical studies, it can be difficult to get enough participants to get a true idea of how prolific the results can be. This is one of those studies with a large patient population so I'm more inclined to take the information seriously. However, what we really need now is for someone else to perform a similar study and compare the results obtained with the ones here.
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