Clinical and Anamnestic Characteristics, Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy and Long-term Outcomes in Multimorbid Patients after COVID-19

Aim. To study the clinical and anamnestic characteristics, pharmacotherapy of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and long-term outcomes in post-COVID-19 patients with cardiovascular multimorbidity (CVMM), enrolled in the prospective hospital registry.
Material and methods. In patients with confirmed COVID-19 included in the TARGET-VIP registry, the CVMM criterion was the presence of two or more CVDs: arterial hypertension (AH), coronary heart disease (CHD), chronic heart failure (CHF), atrial fibrillation (AF). There were 163 patients in the CVMM group and 382 – in the group without CVD. The information was obtained initially from hospital history sheet, and afterwards – from a telephone survey of patients after 30-60 days, 6 and 12 months, from electronic databases. The follow-up period was 13.0±1.5 months.
Results. The age of post-COVID patients with CVMM was 73.7±9.6 years, without CVD – 49.4±12.4 years (p<0.001), the proportion of men was 53.9% and 58.4% (p=0.34). In the group with CVMM the majority of patients had AH (92.3-93.3%), CHD (90.4-91.4%), and minority – CHF (42.7-46.0%) and AF (42.9-43.4%). The combination of 3-4 CVDs prevailed (58.9-60.3%). The proportion of cases of chronic non-cardiac pathologies was higher in the CVMM group (80.9%) compared to the group without CVD (36.7%; p<0.001). The frequency of proper cardiovascular pharmacotherapy during the follow-up period decreased from 56.8% to 51.3% (p for trend = 0.18). The frequency of anticoagulant therapy in AF decreased significantly: from 89.1% at the discharge from the hospital to 56.4% after 30-60 days (p=0.001), 57.1% and 53.6% after 6 and 12 months of monitoring (p for a trend <0.001). There were no other significant changes in the frequency of other kinds of the proper cardiovascular pharmacotherapy (p>0.05). There were higher rate of all-cause mortality among patients with CMMM (12.9% vs 2.9%, p<0.001) as well as rates of hospitalization (34.7% and 9.9%, p<0.001) and non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI) – 2.5% vs 0.5% (p=0.048). The proportion of new cases of CVD in the groups with CVMM and without CVD was 5.5% and 3.7% (p=0.33). The incidence of acute respiratory viral infection (ARVI)/influenza was higher in the group without CVD – 28.3% vs 19.0% (p=0.02). The proportion of cases of recurrent COVID-19 in groups with CVMM and without CVD was 3.7 % and 1.8% (p=0.19).
Conclusion. Post COVID-19 patients with CVMM were older and had the bigger number of chronic non-cardiac diseases than patients without CVD. The quality of cardiovascular pharmacotherapy in patients with CVMM was insufficient at the discharge from the hospital with following non-significant decrease during 12 months of follow-up. The frequency of anticoagulant therapy in AF decreased by 1.6 times after 30-60 days and by 1.7 times during the year of follow-up. The proportion of new cases of CVD was 5.5% and 3.7% with no significant differences between compared groups. The rate of all-cause mortality, hospitalizations and non-fatal MI was significantly higher in patients with CVMM, but the frequency of ARVI/influenza was significantly higher in patients without CVD. Recurrent COVID-19 was registered in 3.7% and 1.8% of cases, there were no significant differences between compared groups.

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