The new AHA COVID-19 CVD registry details the disparities in care

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.November 17, 2020

A new American Heart Association collaborative model for COVID-19 research, using data from the new AHA COVID-19 cardiovascular disease registry, found that Hispanic and black adults with COVID-19 were much more likely to be hospitalized. hospital compared to their white counterparts, as well as people with obesity and COVID-19, according to three recent research studies presented today at the American Heart Association’s 2020 scientific sessions. The virtual meeting will be held from Friday 13 to Tuesday 17 November 2020 and is a leading global exchange of the latest scientific advances, research and evidence-based clinical practice updates in cardiovascular science for healthcare across the world.

AHA COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry: Design, Implementation, and Initial Results

This abstract details the structure, implementation, and initial findings of the American Heart Association’s new COVID-19 cardiovascular disease registry. Identifying the need to quickly collect and provide information on hospitalized patients with the novel coronavirus, volunteer leaders and staff of the American Heart Association created the registry within weeks of the global pandemic being declared. Hospitals started uploading patient data to the registry before the end of April. As of September 9, 2020, health data from more than 17,000 patients from 101 US health centers in 33 states has been saved in the registry.

More than 200 data points are collected on each patient record submitted to the registry, including patient demographics, cardiovascular risk factors and other comorbidities, medications before admission, and treatments received during admission, including emerging COVID-19 therapies. Additionally, measures of disease severity are acquired, such as the need for intensive care unit management, mechanical ventilation, or mechanical circulatory support. Numerous serial laboratory data (information from blood tests, nasal swabs, saliva samples, or other tests) are also collected, including cardiovascular and inflammatory biomarkers, as well as results of cardiovascular tests performed during hospitalization.

The COVID-19 CVD registry is powered by the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines^® programs and groups de-identified health data on patients treated for COVID-19 in hospitals across the country. The data is available for research and analysis through the association’s cloud-based precision medicine platform. The precision medicine platform allows multiple teams of researchers to pursue different questions using registry data simultaneously, which expands research capacity, reduces costs and shortens the time for discovering and sharing new information.

“We call it ‘explosive science’, with this robust library of data on patients hospitalized and treated for COVID-19 here in the United States, we can conduct many more analyzes and research projects in a much shorter period of time.”

James A. de Lemos, MD, author of all three studies and co-chair of the Association’s COVID-19 CVD Registry Steering Committee

“The registry allows for rapid collection, analysis and distribution of important information during this pandemic,” said de Lemos, professor of medicine and Sweetheart Ball-Kern Wildenthal, MD, Ph.D., distinguished chair of cardiology at the Southwestern Medical Center. of the University of Texas in Dallas. “And these collaborative efforts have implications for accelerating and sharing research beyond the current COVID-19 pandemic.”

de Lemos noted that “the rates of heart attack, heart failure and stroke in patients with COVID-19 were lower than expected,” based on preliminary reports from smaller studies.