Common? Patients who have had COVID have only a 20% increased risk of AFib post infection. Thats hardly "common" that would make it fairly rare.
@freemo I said palpitations are common (10-20% of folks with post-COVID syndromes have them). A-fib is one of the many causes of this, and I would argue is not all that rare compared to many things we consider quite serious in Emergency Medicine, particularly since a-fib has a significant stroke risk associated with it. We can quibble over what exact cutoff makes something a concern I suppose, but to what end?
> but to what end?
Largely my concern is fear mongering (perhaps unintentional). There has been a great deal of over-hyping COVID and has caused people to be dispreportionaltly scared of the disease and its consequences. While it is of course a serious disease people have heard so much disinformation to make it sound scarier than it is that people are often irrationally afraid of it relative to the risks.
Saying its common makes people think most people who catch it will start having heart problems when in fact a very very small portion of people who catch it will. So that needs pointing out.
@freemo up to 30% of people who get COVID get some form of post-COVID syndrome. Estimates vary widely on the number who experience cardiovascular complications, but there are entire clinics dedicated the problem, so it isn’t exactly a rare presentation to healthcare. I agree that there is overhyping of some of the risk, but overall, I would argue that in fact the risks associated with infection have been downplayed quite a bit.