Clinical characteristics and prognosis of hospitalized COVID‐19 patients with incident sustained tachyarrhythmias: a multicenter observational study

Abstract

Introduction

Little is still known about the prognostic impact of incident arrhythmias in hospitalized patients with COVID‐19. Aim of our study is to evaluate the incidence and predictors of sustained tachyarrhythmias in hospitalized patients with COVID‐19, and their potential association with disease severity and in‐hospital mortality.

Materials and Methods

This was a retrospective multicenter observation study including consecutive patients with laboratory confirmed COVID‐19 admitted to emergency department of ten Italian Hospitals from February 15 ^th to March 15 ^th 2020. The prevalence and the type of incident sustained arrhythmias have been collected. The correlation between the most prevalent arrhythmias and both baseline characteristics and the development of ARDS and in‐hospital mortality has been evaluated.

Results

414 hospitalized patients with COVID‐19 (66.9 ± 15.0 years, 61.1% male) were included in the present study. During a median follow‐up of 28 days (IQR: 12‐ 45), the most frequent incident sustained arrhythmia was AF (N: 71; 17.1%), of which 50 (12.1%) were new‐onset and 21 (5.1%) were recurrent, followed by VT (N: 14, 3.4%) and supraventricular arrhythmias (N: 5, 1.2%). Incident AF, both new‐onset and recurrent, did not affect the risk of severe adverse events including ARDS and death during hospitalization; in contrast incident VT significantly increased the risk of in‐hospital mortality (RR: 2.55; P:0.003).

Conclusions

AF is the more frequent incident tachyarrhythmia; however, it not seems associated to ARDS development and death. On the other hand, incident VT is a not frequent but independent predictor of in‐hospital mortality among hospitalized COVID‐19 patients.