A Penn State doctor found that approximately one-third of athletes in the Big 10 conference who tested for coronavirus and received cardiac MRIs suffered from heart inflammation.
Wayne Sebastianelli, Penn State’s director of athletic medicine, announced the findings during a Monday board meeting.
“What we have seen when people have been studied, with cardiac MRI scans, symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID infections, is a level of inflammation in cardiac muscle that just is alarming,” Sebastianelli said during the meeting. “And we don't know why it happens, we don't know who it's happening in, but some of the testing that has occurred across the Big 10 has revealed roughly 30 percent of the athletes reveal this inflammation.”
“We really just don’t know what to do with it right now, because it's still very early in the infection, so some of that has led to the Pac 12 and the Big 10's decision to sort of put a hiatus on what’s happening because we really want to study this a little bit further and figure out what's going on with the student-athlete,” Sebastianelli said.
Sebastianelli said he doesn't know how serious this finding is, but he didn't think cardiologists he talked to consider it a big concern.
“There are many cardiologists, some very high level, at the Mayo Clinic, who feel like this is probably a finding that is incidental, and may not warrant any further investigation, or any further sort of concern,” Sebastianelli said. “And they'll let somebody really compete again within [30 days or so].
And some athletes in the Big 10 have yet to recover from coronavirus.
“Some of the athletes that have been infected haven't really recovered to their full pulmonary function,” Sebastianelli said. “They just don't train as hard as they normally can. Their tolerance has decreased, and so whether that's heart-related or lung-related, we really don't know yet and it's just another variable in change in performance that has to be re-evaluated over time.”
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