Severe Covid‐19 and acute pulmonary hypertension: 24‐month follow‐up regarding mortality and relationship to initial echocardiographic findings and biomarkers

INTRODUCTION: Critically ill Covid‐19 patients are likely to develop the sequence of acute pulmonary hypertension (aPH), right ventricular strain, and eventually right ventricular failure due to currently known pathophysiology (endothelial inflammation plus thrombo‐embolism) that promotes increased pulmonary vascular resistance and pulmonary artery pressure. Furthermore, an in‐hospital trans‐thoracic echocardiography (TTE) diagnosis of aPH is associated with a substantially increased risk of early mortality. The aim of this retrospective observational follow‐up study was to explore the mortality during the 1–24‐month period following the TTE diagnosis of aPH in the intensive care unit (ICU). METHODS: A previously reported cohort of 67 ICU‐treated Covid‐19 patients underwent an electronic medical chart‐based follow‐up 24 months after the ICU TTE. Apart from the influence of aPH versus non‐aPH on mortality, several TTE parameters were analyzed by the Kaplan–Meier survival plot technique (K‐M). The influence of biomarkers for heart failure (NTproBNP) and myocardial injury (Troponin‐T), taken at the time of the ICU TTE investigation, was analyzed using receiver‐operator characteristics curve (ROC) analysis. RESULTS: The overall mortality at the 24‐month follow‐up was 61.5% and 12.8% in group aPH and group non‐aPH, respectively. An increased relative mortality risk continued to be present in aPH patients (14.3%) compared to non‐aPH patients (5.6%) during the 1–24‐month period. The easily determined parameter of a tricuspid valve regurgitation, allowing a measurement of a systolic pulmonary artery pressure (regardless of magnitude), was associated with a similar K‐M outcome as the generally accepted diagnostic criteria for aPH (systolic pulmonary artery pressure >35 mmHg). The biomarker values of NTproBNP and Troponin‐T at the time of the TTE did not result in any clinically useful ROC analysis data. CONCLUSION: The mortality risk was increased up to 24 months after the initial examination in ICU‐treated Covid‐19 patients with a TTE diagnosis of aPH, compared to non‐aPH patients. Certain individual TTE parameters were able to discriminate 24‐month risk of morality.