Athletes with COVID-19 may require cardiac MRI screening for myocarditis, according to new data presented at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting on Monday.
Such inflammation of the heart has emerged as a potentially dangerous side effect from the virus, but spotting it early is not always easy. Scientists affiliated with the Big Ten athletic conference recently collaborated to better understand this clinical concern, utilizing nearly 1,600 cardiac MRIs from 13 participating schools.
Doctors diagnosed about 2.3% of athletes with COVID-19 myocarditis, mirroring the general population. But about 54% of subjects showed no prior cardiac symptoms or testing abnormalities. Magnetic resonance imaging was the only exam able to pinpoint the problem, yielding a 7.4-fold increase in detection.
“The role of cardiac MRI as a screening tool in this population needs to be explored,” Jean Jeudy, MD, a professor and radiologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said in an RSNA statement. “The reality is that there are a small percentage of cases where we know the athletes have an increased risk for sudden death and using cardiac MRI will increase the number of players who are identified.”
For their study, Big Ten schools collected data from conference athletes recovering from COVID-19. Participants were required to undergo several exams before returning to play, including MRI, echocardiogram, ECG and blood tests. Jeudy serves as MRI core leader for the Big Ten Cardiac Registry, which oversaw data collection.
All told, 37 athletes in the study had myocarditis, which has previously been linked to upward of 20% of sudden deaths among student athletes. Researchers said they’ll continue adding to the registry to help foster better understanding about this issue. Barriers including cost and lack of access may prevent widespread access to MRI screening, but Jeudy and colleagues see promise.
“There are a lot of chronic issues with COVID-19 that we need to know more about, and hopefully this registry can be one of the major parts of getting that information,” he added.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.