Myocarditis Is Rare in COVID-19 Autopsies: Cardiovascular Findings Across 277 Postmortem Examinations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-23-2020
Publication Title
Cardiovascular Pathology
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic, the result of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2, is a major cause of worldwide mortality with a significant cardiovascular component. While a number of different cardiovascular histopathologies have been reported at postmortem examination, their incidence is unknown, due to limited numbers of cases in any given study. A literature review was performed identifying 277 autopsied hearts across 22 separate publications of COVID-19 positive patients. The median age of the autopsy cohort was 75 and 97.6% had one or more comorbidities. Initial review of the data indicate that myocarditis was present in 20 hearts (7.2%); however, closer examination of additional reported information revealed that most cases were likely not functionally significant and the true prevalence of myocarditis is likely much lower (<2%). At least one acute, potentially COVID-19-related cardiovascular histopathologic finding, such as macro or microvascular thrombi, inflammation, or intraluminal megakaryocytes, was reported in 47.8% of cases. Significant differences in reporting of histopathologic findings occurred between studies indicating strong biases in observations and the need for more consistency in reporting. In conclusion, across 277 cases, COVID-19-related cardiac histopathological findings, are common, while myocarditis is rare.
PubMed ID
33132119
Volume
50
Publisher
Elsevier
Recommended Citation
Halushka, Marc K. and Vander Heide, Richard S., "Myocarditis Is Rare in COVID-19 Autopsies: Cardiovascular Findings Across 277 Postmortem Examinations" (2020). School of Medicine Faculty Publications. 258.
https://digitalscholar.lsuhsc.edu/som_facpubs/258