Introduction
Since the last December, the entire world is facing a new pandemic situation, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). After emerging from Wuhan-China, the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) quickly spread throughout the world. Due to all its unknown factors, physicians are passing through real-time learning process. As the disease spreads, a massive wave of information takes over scientific journals and media.
This new virus belongs to the same severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (MERS-CoV) family. Although COVID-19 clinical manifestations are mainly respiratory, with the growing number of infected patients, major cardiac complications have been reported in a considerable number of COVID-19 patients1-3.
SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with a variety of pro-inflammatory mediators that may play important roles in the pathophysiology of cardiac and arrhythmic complications. In a single center study1 cardiac injury was observed in 19% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19, and it was associated with higher risk of in-hospital mortality. Therefore, it is plausible that these patients have an even higher risk of cardiac arrhythmias.
Aiming to shed some light in this issue, we performed this review focused on COVID-19 cardiac manifestations not only by analyzing the preliminary available evidence about the virus, but also by making comparative considerations with SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and H1N1 influenza.