Covid-19 can cause entire spectrum of heart diseases, says cardiologist

"We are seeing patients who recovered from COVID come back with heart failure, and then we see that they have cardiomyopathy (weakness in the heart muscle)"

COVID-19 is affecting the heart, as studies have shown, and patients with pre-existing heart conditions also have a higher incidence of severe disease, making it a double-edged sword, Sameer Gupta, an interventional cardiologist at the Metro Hospitals and Heart Institute in Delhi, says.

Recovered COVID-19 patients are coming back with stress cardiomyopathy--a temporary weakening of the heart muscle--and myocarditis (weakness of the heart muscle due to inflammation), Gupta says in this interview, explaining that this is an effect of the massive infection or inflammation, and not of the virus itself.

Gupta specialises in interventional cardiovascular