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Individuals who continue to experience shortness of breath post-acute COVID-19 despite normal chest imaging and pulmonary function tests appear to have respiratory and circulatory abnormalities that are detectable with cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET), new research suggests.
Circulatory impairment and abnormal ventilatory patterns were identified with CPET in a majority of 41 patients with post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) who had normal chest x-rays, chest computed tomography (CT), and pulmonary function tests (PFTs).
Moreover, nearly half also met criteria for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), a population in whom similar abnormalities have also been detected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic using CPET.
The new data were published online November 29 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Heart Failure by Donna M. Mancini, MD, professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and director of the heart failure and transplant programs at the Mount Sinai Health System, New York City.
"Their chest x-rays are now normal, their chest CT scans are now normal, their PFTs are now normal, but yet they're short of breath," Mancini told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology
