How the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted 6-month outcomes for heart attack patients
Enough time has passed since the COVID-19 pandemic began that researchers are starting to learn more and more about how, exactly, it affected cardiovascular care.
For example, the authors of a new analysis in the American Journal of Cardiology compared six-month outcomes of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients treated during the pandemic with those who were treated before the pandemic.
The study focused on patients treated from March 11 to April 20, 2020, at one of two facilities in Lithuania. If a patient tested positive for COVID-19, they were excluded from this study.
Overall, 107 patients were treated during the pandemic and another 162 patients were treated in 2019. The biggest finding from the team’s research was that the major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE) rate was much higher for patients treated during the pandemic (30.8%) than patients treated before the pandemic (13.6%).
Also, pain-to-door times and troponin I levels were “significantly higher” for patients treated during the pandemic. The higher pain-to-door times seem related to the fact that patients avoided treatment during the earliest stages of the pandemic. This was a well-documented trend during that time, one that has been reported by researchers all over the world.
In addition, the study’s authors wrote, there was a “significant decrease” in post-revascularization ejection fraction among AMI patients treated during the pandemic.
“This is likely attributed to a prolonged ischemic state, as evidenced by longer pain-to-door time and door-to-wire time,” wrote lead author Ali Aldujeli MD, MSc, a cardiologist at Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, and colleagues. “This is consistent with results from previous reports, which revealed that longer ischemia duration is associated with greater infarct size and lower ejection fraction levels.”
Patients treated during the pandemic, meanwhile, had worse left ventricular systolic function and more readmissions due to decompensated acute heart failure. And NSTEMI patients saw their risk of being hospitalized for heart failure increase significantly, though that finding “less amplified” for STEMI patients.
Read the full study here.
Michael has more than 18 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.