Regional involvement in left ventricular strain in patients recovered from covid-19 pneumonia

Objective: COVID-19 patients with cardiovascular involvement have been shown to have a worse prognosis compared to those without cardiovascular compromise. This study aimed to inves-tigate whether left ventricular (LV) global and regional strain is impaired in patients with COVID-19 with or without pneumonia after discharge. Materials and Methods: Seventy-eight consecutive COVID-19 patients diagnosed by PCR test were enrolled in this cross-sec-tional study during their first follow-up visit to an outpatient clinic. All patients underwent two-dimensional echocardiogra-phy and speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) at the first fol-low-up visit. The patients were divided into two groups with or without pneumonia, and they were compared with the healthy control group. Results: A total of 123 subjects were included in the study (78 with COVID-19 and 45 in the control group). Admission and follow-up hs-troponin-T concentrations were similar in both the control group and patients with varying severity of COVID-19. LV ejection fraction (EF) was similar in all groups. However, LV global longitudinal strain (GLS) was significantly lower in subjects with pneumonia compared to the control group and subjects with-out pneumonia. Regional strain analysis showed that subjects with pneumonia had significantly lower strain values at mid -an-terior, mid-anteroseptal, apical-inferior, apical-lateral, and apex regions than subjects without pneumonia or the control group. Conclusion: LV GLS and the regional strain were significantly impaired in COVID-19 patients with pneumonia compared to those without pneumonia or in to control group. This finding in-dicates that COVID-19 subjects with pneumonia should undergo strain measurement to detect concealed LV involvement.