Myocarditis during a COVID-19 infection is similar to the classic myocarditis that pediatric cardiologists use to describe what they see with some non-COVID viral infections. But different types of myocarditis exist, including three types related to COVID-19: myocarditis from the SARS-CoV-2 infection itself, from COVID-19-triggered MIS-C, and from the vaccine. Like Elias, Han says most vaccine-associated myocarditis cases are mild, without “significant disturbance to the heart function or inability to maintain blood pressure.” Different types of myocarditisīroadly speaking, myocarditis refers to inflammation of the heart and can involve a wide range of symptoms and severity, from very mild pain to heart failure, explains Elias. “The pediatric hospital experience shows that the risk of patients at any age having cardiac involvement from COVID is uniformly worse than vaccination myocarditis risk,” says Frank Han, a pediatric cardiologist at OSF Healthcare in central Illinois. children have had MIS-C since the pandemic began, though experts believe that’s an underestimate.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 5,500 U.S.
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MIS-C can involve inflammation of many organs, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, and digestive organs. MIS-C is a serious condition that can occur two to six weeks after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection in about one out of 3,200 infected children, even if the infection was mild or asymptomatic. Myocarditis after the vaccine is rarer and usually milder than the cardiac complications from COVID-19, including those from multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), says Matthew Elias, a pediatric cardiologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Yet review of more than two dozen articles in peer-reviewed medical journals, government documents, and interviews with 10 pediatric cardiologists and pediatricians offer a reassuring picture of the safety of pediatric COVID-19 vaccination. Another 27 percent planned to vaccinate their kids immediately, while 30 percent said they would not vaccinate their kids at all. Shortly before the FDA authorized the Pfizer vaccine for younger children, one in three parents planned to “wait and see” before vaccinating their kids, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. have now been vaccinated, a substantial proportion of parents remain uneasy about it, according to a recent nationwide survey. Although more than one million children ages five through 11 in the U.S. The mixed messages have left parents feeling confused and uncertain. Meanwhile, two members of the advisory board that recommended the Food and Drug Administration authorize the vaccine for children between ages 5 and 11 have questioned whether all younger children should be vaccinated before there is more information on the risk of myocarditis. Likewise, they say, some physicians who treat adults have minimized the threat that COVID-19 poses to children. Many pediatricians and pediatric cardiologists lament that myocarditis-a rare side effect from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in adolescents-has been hyped, receiving arguably more attention than the life-saving benefits of the vaccine. As more information came out, she says, “I became more confident in vaccination.” Her son received his first vaccine dose two weeks ago. “There were a lot of inflammatory headlines from the media that preyed on a parent’s fear in terms of the vaccination and very little information readily available regarding the damage COVID can do.”īrown spoke with her son’s cardiologist and mulled it over for weeks. ”To read about children with no cardiac history having myocarditis as a pediatric vaccine complication was scary,” Brown says. But Brown also knew that after getting some COVID-19 vaccines, adolescent boys are at risk of developing myocarditis, a different kind of inflammation of the heart.
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Her five-year-old was born with a congenital heart defect that required a risky surgery when he was two years old to avoid a lifelong risk of heart inflammation from infection. Elizabeth Brown, a mother of two who lives outside Denver, Colorado, had a tough decision to make when childhood COVID-19 vaccines became available.