Elizabeth Cohen CNN Senior Medical Correspondent
News about the potential link between the Covid-19 vaccine and heart disease in adolescents may be of significant fear to some parents.
However, pediatric cardiologists are sending a message to these parents. Covid-19 should scare you much more than a vaccine.
And these doctors should know. They treated a young patient with this heart disease (called myocarditis or myocardial inflammation) after vaccination. We also treated a young patient with Covid-19.
There is simply no comparison between the two, they say.
Myocarditis sounds scary, but there is a mild version. In almost all vaccinated adolescents (ages 16 to 24), the symptoms disappeared immediately. Covid-19, on the other hand, can be a long-term illness or kill young people. Thousands have already died.
CNN talks about cases of myocarditis with Dr. Kevin Hall of Yale Medical School, a pediatric cardiologist, and Dr. Stuartberger of Northwestern University Fineberg School of Medicine, who is also the chair of the section of the American Academy of Pediatrics on Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery. talked. Discovered among adolescents after vaccination with the Moderna or Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.
Both doctors, and American Heart Association The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the Covid-19 vaccine for young people.
What Causes Myocarditis? And how often does it happen to young people?
Myocarditis is relatively rare, but it occurs in adolescents (and long before the Covid-19 vaccine was introduced). It is usually caused by a viral or bacterial infection. Another vaccine against smallpox was previously associated with myocarditis.
There are many types of myocarditis. Some people feel nothing and are fine without treatment. Myocarditis can be fatal to others.
Berger estimates that he sees about one child a week in the emergency room at Lully Children’s Hospital in Chicago, in the summer when coxsackieviruses and other viruses that cause myocarditis are in full bloom. I will. Generally speaking, these young people are otherwise healthy.
People from adolescence to their early 30s are at increased risk of myocarditis. Myocarditis Foundation.. Men are affected twice as often as women.
How many people in the United States have developed myocarditis after vaccination with Covid-19?
As of May 31, nearly 170 million Americans had been vaccinated with at least one Covid-19 vaccine, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During that time, less than 800 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis (inflammation of tissues around the heart) were reported after vaccination. CDC, Most of them after the second dose. And these are tentative numbers — they are less likely because further research may show that not all of these people actually suffered from myocarditis or pericarditis. there is.
Are these numbers unusual?
As we mentioned, people develop myocarditis and pericarditis (inflammation of the inner layer around the heart) without the Covid-19 vaccine. The CDC has set out to determine if the number of post-vaccination myocarditis and pericarditis is higher than that would be seen without the Covid-19 vaccine.
The answer was “yes” for people between the ages of 16 and 24. The CDC, between the ages of 16 and 17, had 79 reports of illness immediately after vaccination as of May 31, usually referring to about 2-19 cases in this group. For ages 18-24, there are 196 reports and 8-83 are expected. There were reports of myocarditis and pericarditis in the elderly, but the numbers were less than normally expected.
Did myocarditis in these vaccinated adolescents really make them sick?
An inflamed heart, by definition, always sounds like a big deal, doesn’t it? But that’s not the case.
“Often people have myocarditis and even don’t know it. It’s gone and they’re okay,” Berger said.
In the majority of these post-vaccination cases, the patient recovered completely.
The CDC examined 270 patients admitted to and discharged from the hospital as of May 31, and found that 81% had complete recovery. The other 19% had ongoing symptoms or their recovery status was unknown.
Hall, a pediatric cardiologist at Yale University, said many post-vaccinated myocarditis patients in his hospital didn’t feel so sick, but allowed doctors to do more tests. And said he was hospitalized with great care.
“Some of these young men and boys were pretty angry that they had to stay in the hospital,” Hall said.
What were the symptoms of these young people?
Hall is a co-author of Research Seven cases of post-vaccinated adolescent myocarditis were examined and announced last week.
Everyone felt chest pain, and some had a fever, weakened or tired.
Those symptoms began 2-4 days after the second dose of the vaccine. They spent two to six days in the hospital. For all seven patients, medications such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids rapidly resolved their symptoms.
All 7 cases were male. According to the CDC report, most cases were male.
What about the young people who got Covid-19?
This is at the heart of the problem. When young people developed myocarditis after vaccination, the numbers were low and they were less ill.
Most young people who develop Covid-19 are fine, but some develop complications and die of infections.
As of June 9, 2,637 people under the age of 30 had died in connection with Covid-19, according to the CDC. As of June 5 Preliminary data It shows that 3,110 people under the age of 18 are hospitalized. According to the CDC, that number may be underestimated.
Berger and Hall have each taken care of dozens of Covid patients.
“Some of them spent weeks in the intensive care unit. They had poor heart function. They had an acute infection that could be completely prevented by the vaccine,” Berger said.
Some people have long-term illness, even if they recover.
“We continue to worry about these children in the long run,” Hall said. “Some people have persistent changes on their heart tests. This is a very serious illness.”
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