One week after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it was investigating heart inflammation in recently vaccinated young adults, Connecticut reported 18 new cases of heart problems among teens who had received a COVID vaccine.
All 18 cases resulted in hospitalization — the vast majority for a couple of days, reported NBC Connecticut. The cases were reported to the Connecticut Department of Public Health by vaccine providers, said Deirdre Gifford, acting health commissioner.
“One individual that we’re aware of is still hospitalized,” Guifford said Monday. “The other 17 have been sent home and they’re doing fine.”
The first case at Connecticut Children’s was Rachel Hatton’s 17-year-old son, Gregory.
“It’s terrifying,” said Hatton. Her son started complaining of severe chest pain three days after his second vaccine dose. It worsened on the fourth day, causing back pain.
After blood work and an x-ray, doctors diagnosed Gregory with pericarditis, an inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart that can cause sharp chest pain and other symptoms.
“They hooked him up to a heart monitor, did more EKGs, echocardiograms. Infectious disease actually came and ran their own set of blood work to try to figure out if it could have been caused by something else, some sort of infection, something else, like Lyme disease. They tested him for all sorts of things and one by one those tests came back negative,” said Hatton.
Doctors couldn’t confirm Gregory’s condition was caused by the COVID vaccine, but two more recently vaccinated patients presented to the hospital with similar symptoms. A spokesperson from Connecticut Children’s said patients have presented with both pericarditis and myocarditis
Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle that can lead to cardiac arrhythmia and death. According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, myocarditis can result from infections, but “more commonly the myocarditis is a result of the body’s immune reaction to the initial heart damage.”
Mayo Clinic doctors say treatment focuses on the cause of the condition and symptoms, such as heart failure and shortness of breath.
