New AHA COVID-19 CVD Registry details the disparities in care

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Nov 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 Hispanic and Black adults with COVID-19 were far more likely to be hospitalized than their white counterparts, as were people with obesity and COVID-19, according to three late-breaking research studies presented today at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2020. The virtual meeting is Friday, November 13 - Tuesday, November 17, 2020, and is a premier global exchange of the latest scientific advancements, research and evidence-based clinical practice updates in cardiovascular science for health care worldwide.

The AHA COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry: Design, implementation, and initial results

This abstract details the structure, implementation and initial results of the new American Heart Association COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry. Identifying a need to rapidly collect and provide insights into patients hospitalized with the novel coronavirus, volunteer leaders and staff of the American Heart Association created the registry within weeks of the declaration of the global pandemic. Hospitals began uploading patient records into the registry before the end of April. As of September 9, 2020, health data for more than 17,000 patients from 101 U.S. health care centers in 33 states have 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 prior to admission and treatments received during hospitalization including emerging COVID-19 therapies. In addition, disease severity measures, such as the need for intensive care unit management, mechanical ventilation or mechanical circulatory support, are being captured. Extensive serial laboratory data (information from blood tests, nasal swabs, saliva samples or other tests) are also being collected, including cardiovascular and inflammatory biomarkers, as well as results of cardiovascular testing performed during hospitalization.

The COVID-19 CVD Registry is powered by the American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines^® program and pools de-identified health data about patients treated for COVID-19 at 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 investigators to pursue different questions using the registry's data simultaneously, which expands research capacity, reduces costs and shortens the time to discovery and sharing of new information.

We call it 'burst science,' With this robust library of data on patients hospitalized and treated for COVID-19 here in the U.S., we can conduct many more analyses and research projects in a much shorter period of time."

James A. de Lemos, M.D., an author of all three studies and co-chair of Association's COVID-19 CVD Registry Steering Committee

"The registry is allowing quick collection, analysis and distribution of important information during this pandemic," said de Lemos, who is a professor of medicine and the Sweetheart Ball-Kern Wildenthal, M.D., Ph.D., distinguished chair in cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center 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 we had expected," based on preliminary reports from smaller studies.