Press releases are distributed to the media throughout the week highlighting research presented at RSNA 2021. RSNA’s media outreach helps increase public awareness of radiology and its role in personal health care.
COVID-19 Linked to Heart Inflammation in College Athletes
A small but significant percentage of college athletes with COVID-19 develop myocarditis, according to a new study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Clinicians at schools in the highly competitive Big Ten athletic conference collaborated to collect data on the frequency of myocarditis in student-athletes recovering from COVID-19 infection. Conference officials had required all athletes who had COVID-19 to get a series of cardiac tests before returning to play, providing a unique opportunity for researchers to collect data on the athletes’ cardiac status.
Thirty-seven of the athletes, or 2.3%, were diagnosed with COVID-19 myocarditis, a percentage on par with the incidence of myocarditis in the general population. However, an alarmingly high proportion of the myocarditis cases were found in athletes with no clinical symptoms. Twenty of the patients with COVID-19 myocarditis (54%) had neither cardiac symptoms nor cardiac testing abnormalities. Only cardiac MRI identified the problem.
The implications of post-COVID-19 myocardial injury detected by cardiac MRI are still unknown.
Large International Study Reveals Spectrum of COVID-19 Brain Complications
Approximately one in 100 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 will likely develop complications of the central nervous system, according to a new study from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Researchers analyzed nearly 40,000 cases of hospitalized COVID-19 positive patients from seven U.S. and four western European university hospitals. The patients had been admitted between September 2019 and June 2020. Their average age was 66 years old, and there were twice as many men as women.
There were 442 acute neuroimaging findings that were most likely associated with the viral infection. The overall incidence of central nervous system complications in this large patient group was 1.2%.
The most common complication was ischemic stroke, with an incidence of 6.2%, followed by intracranial hemorrhage (3.72%) and encephalitis (0.47%).
