Woman's palpitations brushed off as 'stress' before she died at 32

Woman's palpitations brushed off as 'stress' before she died at 32 (msn.com)

 

How terrible
She was fatally let down.

I’ve been struggling since 2020 to get doctors to take my Covid triggered heart & lung symptoms seriously, with exactly no success. I’ve lost count of the LC sufferer losses from heart or vascular complications cohort of 2020.

People just dropping dead at younger ages after being told that they’re fine at such a rate.

Its not just Covid directly it’s the fact that “our NHS is overwhelmed” in no small part because Covid is destroying the health of all of us, and we’re just pretending it’s not happening.

The doctors are off sick the nurses the receptionists the radiologists, off sick with another ‘cold’ or ‘virus’.


You quite literally have to forget Covid exists here. I’d love to see the internal memos because people physically seize up and go silent when you mention Covid to anyone in the NHS.

 

There were leaked memos going round the covid groups a while back where it was literally NHS policy not to test for covid if you were sick. Like if you took a covid test and it was positive you got in trouble.

Are we seeing a trauma response at an institutional level? This inability to acknowledge covid? I understand why govt and business want it disappeared but as to why Drs are playing along - maybe they find masking/seeing masks etc traumatic. It must have been hell for them in 2020/21. It's no excuse for the ableism they show to anyone who needs to take precautions but still I wonder...

 

I’ve just read the full article and I am confused, was she in hospital when she died?

What are the tests that they could have given her to find the myocarditis?

 

Yes. She'd been seen at A&E and discharged previously but was admitted for overnight observation. She was possibly on an ECG monitor though may not have been. It sounds like she went into unrecoverable cardiac arrest at 1-2 am.

Standard tests include ECG, echocardiogram, possibly stress ECG/echo. The more specific / gold standard tests are endomyocardial biopsy (invasive) and cardiac MRI (non-invasive). I imagine most diagnoses are confirmed on CMR but you can also do nuclear medicine: scintigraphy or PET.

A review article is —

A Review of the Role of Imaging Modalities in the Evaluation of Viral Myocarditis with a Special Focus on COVID-19-Related Myocarditis (2022)
Adeboye, Adedayo; Alkhatib, Deya; Butt, Asra; Yedlapati, Neeraja; Garg, Nadish

Viral myocarditis is inflammation of the myocardium secondary to viral infection. The clinical presentation of viral myocarditis is very heterogeneous and can range from nonspecific symptoms of malaise and fatigue in subclinical disease to a more florid presentation, such as acute cardiogenic shock and sudden cardiac death in severe cases.

The accurate and prompt diagnosis of viral myocarditis is very challenging. Endomyocardial biopsy is considered to be the gold standard test to confirm viral myocarditis; however, it is an invasive procedure, and the sensitivity is low when myocardial involvement is focal. Cardiac imaging hence plays an essential role in the noninvasive evaluation of viral myocarditis. The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has generated considerable interest in the use of imaging in the early detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-related myocarditis.

This article reviews the role of various cardiac imaging modalities used in the diagnosis and assessment of viral myocarditis, including COVID-19-related myocarditis.

Link | PDF (Diagnostics) [Open Access]

 

Thank you very much @SNT Gatchaman for this information.

It seems like this patient and her family were badly let down. I am sure that they would have trusted that she would be given the tests needed at one of her many presentations and especially while admitted.

I doubt that there is the capacity in our de-funded, de-staffed, insufficiently equipped, pandemic ravaged health system to give people the tests they need and save lives.

I hope advances in this technology and assessment you mention will soon come and help people.