Electrocardiography in Early Diagnosis of CardiovascularComplications of COVID-19; a Systematic Literature Re-view

Many reports have stated that patients admitted for COVID-19 may also suffer from cardiovas-cular diseases, suggesting cardiovascular involvement in COVID-19. Since there is direct association betweenelectrocardiography (ECG) data and the prognosis of cardiovascular disease, a systematic literature review wasperformed in the present study to address this association and make a conclusive agreement on the early di-agnostic and prognostic values of ECG in patients with COVID-19.

Electronic databases includingPubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct, Ovid, Embase, and Google Scholar were searched for “COVID-19” and “ECG” using all their equivalents and similar terms as search words. Afterwards, the records were limitedto English articles and irrelevant documents, as well as articles that reported drug-induced cardiac dysfunctionor patients with previous history of cardiovascular complications were excluded.

Overall, 31 articleswith 2379 patients were found and used for qualitative data extraction. Findings showed that there is a signifi-cant association between COVID-19 infection and ECG findings. Also, ST-segment changes, T wave inversions,QT prolongation, and atrial fibrillation were found to be early indicators of cardiac involvement of COVID-19,which were associated with worse outcomes.

It is recommended to use ECG as a valuable diagnos-tic and prognostic tool for cardiac evaluation of patients with COVID-19.