electrocardiographic abnormalities and troponin levels provide insight on the prognosis of covid-19 patients: a single center experience from iran

Objective: coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) is an infection which can present itself bythe involvement of various organs, but the most common manifestations are respiratorysymptoms, fever and dyspnea with a high mortality rate. in order to study the prognosis ofpatients and also to determine the treatment plan, we need non-invasive methods whichcan be easily used in the triage of patients. in this study, we investigated the diagnosticvalue of electrocardiographic (ecg) changes and troponin levels in patients with thisdisease.methods: this is a descriptive study. confirmed covid-19 patients participated in thepresent study. data were collected by taking history and referring to medical records. weanalyzed data by using chi square, t test and logistic regression through spss softwareversion 22.results: one hundred and five patients with covid-19 disease were examined. mostpatients were men (53.3%) and the mean age was 54.53 years. the most common underlyingdiseases were hypertension and diabetes mellitus. ninety-five patients had abnormalelectrocardiography including eleven with long qt; seven with arrhythmia; 78 with sinustachycardia; 7 with hemi-block; 1 with hemi-block and first degree atrioventricular block;4 with abnormal axis and 28 with ischemic changes. eleven patients (10.5%) had positivetroponin level, whose length of hospital stay was higher (12.73 vs. 12.07 days). furthermore,their mean length of intensive care unit (icu) stay was also higher. in addition, among thetroponin-positive group, 100% had abnormal electrocardiography.conclusion: the findings of the present study showed that ecg abnormalities and troponinlevels could provide good information about the prognosis of patients. moreover, it seemsthat ecg changes in covid-19 patients, whether indicative of underlying heart disease orresulted from infection, can affect the prognosis of patients. therefore, considering ecgfindings and troponin levels can help select patients at a higher risk for triage.