SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has rapidly reached a pandemic proportion and has become a major threaten to global health. Although the predominant clinical feature of COVID-19 is an acute respiratory syndrome of varying severity, ranging from mild symptomatic interstitial pneumonia to acute respiratory distress syndrome, the cardiovascular system can be involved with several facets. As many as 40% hospitalized patients presenting with COVID-19 have pre-existing history of cardiovascular disease and current estimates report a proportion of myocardial injury in COVID-19 patients ranging up to 12%. Multiple pathways have been advocated to explain this finding and the related clinical scenarios, encompassing local and systemic inflammatory response and oxygen supply-demand imbalance. From a clinical point of view, cardiac involvement during COVID-19 may present a wide spectrum of severity ranging from subclinical myocardial injury to well-defined clinical entities (myocarditis, myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism and heart failure), whose incidence and prognostic implications are currently largely unknown due to a significant lack of imaging data. The use of integrated heart and lung multimodality imaging plays a central role in different clinical settings and is essential in diagnosis, risk stratification and management of COVID-19 patients. Aim of this review is to summarize imaging-oriented pathophysiological mechanisms of lung and cardiac involvement in COVID-19 and to provide a guide for an integrated imaging assessment in these patients.

Editors

Editor-in-Chief
Y.S. Chandrashekhar, MD, DM, FACC

CME Editor
Ragavendra R. Baliga, MD

Authors
Alessandro Beneduce, MD
Eustachio Agricola, MD

CME/MOC/ECME Information

Target Audience

JACC Journal CME/MOC is intended for physicians who treat patients with cardiovascular disease.

Important Dates

Date of Release: August 6, 2020
Term of Approval/Date of CME/MOC/ECME Expiration: August 3, 2021