Today I attended this zoom, the Schmidt Initiative for Long Covid Global Echo Webinar Series:

https://hsc.unm.edu/echo/partner-portal/echos-initiatives/long-covid-global-echo.html

Today’s topic is Cardiac Complications of Long Covid.

Whew, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees! It’s complicated! The first distinction is lungs or heart or both. The next is worsened or new measurable heart disease, which is distinguished from heart symptoms without testable heart disease.

Heart disease can include inflammatory heart disease, ischemic heart disease, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias or clotting disorders. These are called PASC-CVD. PASC-CVD stands for Post Acute Sequelae of Covid-19 – CardioVascular Disease.

If those are ruled out, there are three major categories of PASC-CVS – CVS is CardioVascular Symptoms. One is postexertional malaise, a second is POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) and the third is exercise intolerance. They are all different and treated differently. The formal test for POTS is a tilt table, but for places that don’t have access, they recommended the BatemanHorne NASA 10-Minute Lean test, here. That is hugely useful! This is the international conference, in English with simultaneous translation into French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic. Very impressive!

I will write more about today’s lecture, but I am still trying to sort out the trees in this complex forest.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: forest.

I took the photograph this month hiking Mount Zion with my daughter.