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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is known to cause variable extra-respiratory manifestations, including the cardiovascular system. Arrhythmia is one of the reported cardiac complications includes variable situations, from nonspecific electrocardiographic changes to serious arrhythmias in critically ill patients [1]. Early studies reported the incidence of arrhythmias in patients with COVID-19 to be as high as 16.7% [2]. Relative bradycardia (RB) is a relatively low heart rate response to rise in body temperature. RB is a clinical term that is often used in daily practice and the literature as a clinical sign for an individual patient and a characteristic of some infectious diseases. Recently, there has also been studies of bradycardia and relative bradycardia in patients with COVID-19 infection [3,4,5]. Interestingly, bradyarrhythmias including RB were much more common in patients from Asian (up to 40%) compared with other races [6]. However, the enrolled patients were few and the definition of RB was different for each study, raising a question about the real incidence. In addition, no studies have yet been conducted on whether RB can be considered as a clinical feature or its role as a prognostic factor. We, therefore, aimed to evaluate the incidence of relative bradycardia in patients with COVID-19 and to determine potential correlations with the progression.
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