Cardiac involvement in patients recovering from Delta Variant of COVID‐19: a prospective multi‐parametric MRI study

AIMS: The cardiac injury and sequelae of Delta Variant of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) remain unknown. This study aimed to evaluate the presence of cardiac involvement in patients recovering from Delta Variant of COVID‐19 based on multi‐parametric cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). METHODS AND RESULTS: We prospectively assessed patients recovering from Delta Variant of COVID‐19 using multi‐parametric cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) between June 2021 and July 2021. Comparison was made with 25 healthy controls. Forty‐four patients (median age 51 years, 28 women) recovering from Delta Variant were recruited and had a median time of 35 days between diagnosis and cardiac MRI. There were no patients with chest pain (0/44, 0%) and high sensitivity cardiac troponin T troponin elevation (median levels 2.20 pg/mL, IQR levels 0.85–4.40 pg/mL). Regarding the cardiac imaging findings, a total of 14 (32%) patients presented cardiac tissue feature abnormalities, and a total of 9 (20%) patients had a myocarditis‐like injury based on cardiac MRI 2018 Lake Louise criteria. When we further assessed the T1 and T2 mapping values for of patients' individual, abnormal raised global native T1, T2, and extracellular volume were seen in 6 (14%), 6 (14%), and 4 (9%) patients, respectively. Comparing with controls, the patients had lower LV global longitudinal strain and (−22.2 ± 2.8% vs. −24.6 ± 2.0%, P < 0.001) and global circumferential strain (−20.7 ± 6.8% vs. −24.3 ± 2.9%, P = 0.014), but higher global native T1 (1318.8 ± 55.5 ms vs. 1282.9 ± 38.1 ms, P = 0.006). Four (9%) patients presented myocardial late gadolinium enhancement with subepicardial pattern mostly common seen, and two (5%) patients presented pericardial enhancement. CONCLUSIONS: The cardiac MRI could detect subclinical functional and myocardial tissue characteristic abnormalities in individuals who were recovering from Delta Variant without cardiac‐related clinical findings. The native T1 mapping and strain imaging may be a sensitive tool for the noninvasive detection of a subset of patients who are at risk for cardiac sequelae and more prone to myocardial damage in survivors with Delta Variant.