We’ll “follow the science”. This phrase drives me crazy, and the past couple days reporting shows exactly why.
Recent studies had shown that there is a risk of cardiac damage as part of the constellation of COVID-19 effects seen in hospitalized patients. Yesterday, Penn State’s director of athletic medicine, Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli, reported that in their COVID-19 positive athletes, regardless of whether they had symptoms, a third had inflammation of the heart. This is very concerning for long term damage though there is just not enough information yet to tell if the damage will last.
https://www.centredaily.com/sports/college/penn-state-university/psu-football/article245448050.html
Today, Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli retracted the quote of finding 30% of COVID-19 positive athletes had heart inflammation. He says he was quoting someone else’s preliminary data in which there was about a 15% incidence. It is not clear what data he was actually referring to.
Regarding the claim that 30-35% of Big Ten athletes have been discovered to have heart conditions linked to Covid-19: It was incorrect.
— Kyle Bonagura (@BonaguraESPN) September 3, 2020
Here is some clarification from Penn State.
"Dr. Sebastianelli wishes to clarify this point, and apologize for any confusion." pic.twitter.com/ATUc2FxDrU
However, there have been other initial reports, including a study of middle-aged patients who had recovered from COVID-19 and were not hospitalized who demonstrated 78% showed cardiac involvement on cardiac MRI after their recovery.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916
The reason inflammation of the heart muscle is so concerning is that it could lead to scarring in the heart long term which will decrease its pumping capacity. For an elite athlete, this could cause them to become just average. For those of us who are not elite athletes, it could result in shortness of breath with activities or increased fatigue with even mild exertions.
ALL of our data about COVID and its aftermath is preliminary. This data is expected to change over time as we continue to learn more and more studies are done.
More studies do need to be done to look into what exactly the persistent effects of the virus are, but in the interim very difficult decisions have to be made with very limited data, and a concerning lack of transparency.
Maybe it is for the best that some conferences have suspended fall college football even though it’s such a big disappointment to all the fans. There is so much unknown.
We have already seen some athletes suffer cardiac injury after COVID-19, including Boston Red Sox pitcher, Eduardo Rodriguez.
I hope that the current fears are unfounded, but I don’t want to see any college athlete suffer permanent heart damage to play. While there is always a chance of catastrophic injury, they play accepting those risks. At this time I do not believe that there is enough clinical data to truly understand the added risks associated with COVID-19.