New-Onset Atrial Fibrillation and Multiple Systemic Emboli in a COVID-19 Patient

Omar Al-Abbas; Alfarooq Alshaikhli; Hashed A Amran

doi:10.7759/cureus.12917

New-Onset Atrial Fibrillation and Multiple Systemic Emboli in a COVID-19 Patient

Cureus. 2021 Jan 26;13(1):e12917. doi: 10.7759/cureus.12917.

Authors

Omar Al-Abbas¹, Alfarooq Alshaikhli², Hashed A Amran¹

Affiliations

¹ Family Medicine Residency Program, Medical Education, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, QAT.
² Internal Medicine, Beaumont Health, Michigan, USA.

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020. Initially, infected patients presented with fever, nonproductive cough, dyspnea, myalgia, shortness of breath, and radiographic evidence of pneumonia. However, others presented with atypical cardiac manifestation. As this disease is new, the full picture of the disease presentation is not fully understood. Since December 2019, many morbidities related to coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) were documented, including vascular complications like venous thromboembolism (VTE), pulmonary embolism (PE), and deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in acutely ill COVID-19 patients. Hereby, we are writing a case of a patient with COVID-19 infection suffering from new-onset atrial fibrillation (AF). It was complicated by multiple arterial embolisms involving different organs despite the use of an intermediate dose of low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH), and the patient was eventually discharged home on a direct-acting oral anticoagulant (DOAC).

Keywords: atrial fibrillation; covid-19; direct acting oral anticoagulant; electrocardiogram; palpitation; sars-corona virus 2; systemic embolisms.

Publication types

Case Reports