Most patients were male with median age of about 16 years; most common symptom was chest pain
MONDAY, Dec. 6, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Most cases of suspected COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis occurring in young people have a mild clinical course, according to a study published online Dec. 6 in Circulation.
Dongngan T. Truong, M.D., from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and colleagues collected data on patients younger than 21 years presenting before July 4, 2021, with suspected myocarditis within 30 days of COVID-19 vaccination. Data were included for 139 adolescents and young adults (median age, 15.8 years) with 140 episodes of suspected myocarditis (49 confirmed and 91 probable).
The researchers found that 136 patients (97.8 percent) had suspected myocarditis after mRNA vaccination; 131 (94.2 percent) occurred following the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 128 (91.4 percent) were after the second dose. Symptom onset occurred at a median of two days after vaccination. Chest pain was the most common symptom (99.3 percent). Treatment included nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, intravenous immunoglobulin, glucocorticoids, colchicine, or no anti-inflammatory therapies (81.3, 21.6, 21.6, 7.9, and 8.6 percent, respectively). Overall, 26 patients (18.7 percent) were in the intensive care unit, two received inotropic/vasoactive support, and none required extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or died. The median hospital stay was two days. A total of 77.3 percent of the 97 patients who underwent cardiac magnetic resonance imaging at a median of five days from symptom onset had abnormal findings. All patients with left ventricular ejection fraction <55 percent on echocardiogram who received follow-up subsequently had normalized function.
“It is important for health care professionals and the public to have information about early signs, symptoms and the time course of recovery of myocarditis, particularly as these vaccines become more widely available to children,” Truong said in a statement.
Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.