There has been so much written in the press about COVID and the heart. Many of the articles are balanced. Unfortunately, few of the headlines are and people are scared. Know that there is no evidence that COVID commonly "wrecks your heart" ( @sciam should know better). 1/

Also there is no evidence of an emerging "wave of heart disease" ( @nytimes). What we have is an unprecedented focus on this disease ( @edyong209) and a lot of studies with no control groups. It is true that COVID "can" affect the heart ( @EricTopol). This is not surprising. 2/

For the reasons summarized by Eric, we should be careful in monitoring those who are affected. It is also true that even a small percentage of a large number is a large number, so the medical community needs to watch for cardiac and other long term symptoms. 3/

We have actually set up an add-on study to our long term digital health program My Heart Counts to help study genetic factors relevant to this disease and help us follow affected patients over time. You can join here: 4/ https://med.stanford.edu/myheartcounts.html

Meanwhile, we should remember that the cardiac MRI imaging findings that are causing most of the concern are often found in people never infected with SARS-CoV-2 and that myocarditis (where white cells invade the heart directly) appears to be uncommon. 5/

In fact, those of us who work in cardiac critical care have been waiting since the pandemic began for a wave of patients critically ill with myocarditis from COVID. Thankfully we haven't seen this. But that doesn't mean we aren't watching. 6/

What we have unfortunately seen over and over is heart attack patients delaying coming to the hospital for fear of contracting COVID ( @hmkyale). I have personally lost patients for this reason. This is the real "COVID and the heart" story. 7/

Come to the hospital, people. We got you. 8/

I wrote about this in the @latimes last week. 9/ fin https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-17/covid-wave-heart-disease