Abstract

Warda Shahnawaz*, Warda Ali Naqvi, Yassin Ibrahim Hamad, Muhammad Wali Saleem, Zoha Khalid, Tooba Ali, Justice Echezona Obiora, Fatema Tasnim, Gibson Anugwom, Eslam Amr Ahmed Fathi Abdelaziz, Ahmed Ali

ABSTRACT

The pandemic of the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19), the causative agent of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-2 (SARS-CoV-2), has become a public health emergency of the international concern. The majority of the population is exhibiting signs and symptoms similar to the flu and common cold. Despite that, alveolar damage result in progressive lung failure has also been reported. Although COVID-19 has been reported principally to affect the respiratory system, other system?s involvement has also been reported. Cardiovascular involvement has also been underlined in the literature. Cardiovascular involvement in SARS-COV-2 usually corresponds to three situations: (a) cardiac manifestation of the acute coronary syndrome, (b) cardiovascular manifestations of COVID-19 in myocardial injury, myocarditis, arrhythmia, and cardiac arrest (c) cardiac manifestation in patients with comorbidities. The actual disease pathogenesis is unknown; however, direct viral invasion to cardiomyocyte, inflammation of cardiomyocyte due to cytokine and inflammatory markers, activation of the complement system, and lung injury from the virus causing hypoxia leading to oxidative stress, increased oxygen demand, and myocyte injury. Patients with cardiac involvement usually experience a wide range of signs and symptoms such as dyspnea, chest pain, nausea, vomiting, diaphoresis, hypercapnia, tachypnea, and elevation in cardiac biomarkers. The pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 has become a unique challenge for the cardiologist. Various renal manifestations have been observed and reported in many cases, and even renal features may precede the classical respiratory signs and symptoms. In this review, we have summarized the information from published literature including, case reports and open-source data sets, to describe the spectrum of cardiovascular manifestation and complication observed in COVID-19 cases.