The pandemic may have passed, but COVID-19 continues to have an impact.
New research has tied the virus to an increase in deaths from heart failure – a progressive disease in which the heart’s inability to pump enough blood to other organs causes a backflow of blood and fluid into your lungs.
Cardiologist Dr. Ashesh Parikh with Texas Health Plano and Texas Health Physicians Group explains to KERA’s Sam Baker what’s behind the increase.
Dr. Parikh: COVID itself has been linked to what's called myopericarditis. It's a virus that affects the heart muscle. So it can weaken muscle strength of your heart. But luckily, those are very, very minimal in percentage.
What most likely happened is that patients and population in general was not getting the care, being in isolation, because of the pandemic, social distancing, et cetera.
A lot of patients that had bad diabetes or high blood pressure or chronic kidney disease didn't seek care with their doctors and specialists and their conditions essentially got worse.
And those same risk factors then led to them having congestive heart failure, hence the rise in the number of deaths. I think it was gradually decreasing for years until we saw the increase since 2023 to 2024.
Baker: Why have younger adults and black Americans been affected most by this?
Dr. Parikh: Usually that's because of the socio-economic demographics of where patients live, as well as the clinics and the doctor's offices in those particular areas.
You know, a lot of doctors' offices and, unfortunately, rural areas where virtual visits became a thing that we started doing during COVID. A lot of doctors' office had to just close their locations.
And also young patients - I guess you could include myself - we always feel like we're healthy until we're not. So, the mindset also is there that we don't necessarily need to seek care, but in reality, it was negatively affecting their health sort of all along because they were not being able to control their diabetes or get medicines for their blood pressure or they had kidney disease.
The three most common diagnoses in terms of prevalence seen in African-Americans and younger patients these days is the chronic kidney disease, is hypertension, and diabetes.
Baker: When you let that much time pass, can you really counteract the damage that has been done?
Dr. Parikh: To an extent, you can, especially if you catch it early enough, but to a certain extent, you cannot. So it's very case by case on how a patient might present with congestive heart failure.
If you can get on medications, then as long as you can control your diabetes, your blood pressure, kidneys, and if that's something that we've done with medication, then yes, it is reversible for sure.
But if you do have a weakened heart where your heart strength itself has become quite weak. That is something that I would say about a third to 50% of the time becomes unreversible.
Baker: So it is possible that congestive heart failure can be managed?
Dr. Parikh: Managed, yes. But not cured.
There's two kinds of congestive heart failure where someone's heart sort of weakens, but the heart overall still strong, but it cannot relax properly.
And then there's the other kind where the heart itself just cannot squeeze and it loses the ability to pump the blood forward. The better kind, if you will, is the heart where it's still strong but the relaxation is impaired, which usually is correctable by treating the underlying cause, AKA diabetes, blood pressure, etc.
Baker: What steps should you take to avoid heart failure?
Dr. Parikh: Being proactive always, of course, is the number one step that anybody can do, and especially if you have other core morbidities.
Then, definitely your regular visits with your family doctor, make sure that your blood pressure, your diabetes, if you are a smoker, etc., control those risk factors.
There's also a blood test called the BNP that can be ordered sometimes to assess if you're retaining fluid. That's the first signs of precursors for congestive heart failure.
And getting an EKG done, especially once you're over the age of 40. EKGs can often clue you into saying something is not right with your heart efficacy.
RESOURCES:
Heart failure deaths have accelerated in US since Covid pandemic
