Risk of heart attack, stroke down with mild Covid variants: City doctors

Nagpur: Amid a debate whether mild Covid infection can increase incidents of heart attacks, stroke or brain inflammation, city cardiologists and neurosurgeons feel the situation had been alarming during the first and second waves only. They said after the mass vaccination and milder variants of SarsCov2 becoming dominant, the risk of heart attack or stroke has gone down considerably.
“The risk of a heart attack from mild Covid is as much as it is from any normal viral fever. I agree that during first two waves many young patients suffered heart attacks in post-Covid period and cases went up overall. But now we haven’t seen any significant change which can be attributed to Covid infection history,” said Dr Shailendra Ganjewar.
“It’s true that people with severe Covid have worse one-year outcomes, but even those with mild Covid can get increased incidents of heart attacks. We ask all Covid patients not to ignore symptoms and get themselves checked,” Dr A Seth, chairman, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, Delhi, told news agency ANI.
Consulting cardiologist Dr Shoeb Nadeem said he hasn’t seen any significant increase in number of heart attack cases because of ongoing mild Covid infection. “Earlier, we had noticed surge in clotting cases. Majority of cases I am dealing with are due to risk factors associated with sugar, BP, smoking,” he said.
Senior cardiologist Dr Prashant Jagtap too said though in some young patients they get history of Covid, but the viral infection is not necessarily triggering heart attacks. “Chance of vascular thrombosis is there. Unless a series of patients are seen, it is difficult to say if heart attack was due to repeated Covid infection. Cardiological Society of India is doing a study. We will get a proper analysis once it is done. But symptoms shouldn’t be ignored,” he said.
P Srivastava, professor and head, department of neurology, AIIMS Delhi, was quoted by the same news agency as saying, “Post-Covid, there can be a development of complications in brain, there are immediate acute situations like brain attack or stroke in arteries or veins, brain inflammation. Research is underway, there is no black and white picture yet.”
Consulting neurosurgeon Dr Palak Jaiswal said stroke may be caused due to many reasons including alcohol, smoking, stress etc. “We can’t pinpoint it on Covid infection. It is difficult to say. Many of my patients have had Covid infection but I can’t attribute the stroke to it,” he said.