Impact of COVID-19 upon changes in emergency room visits with chest pain of possible cardiac origin

  1. Adeel A. Butt
  2. Anand Kartha
  3. Nidal Asaad
  4. Aftab M. Azad
  5. Roberto Bertollini
  6. Abdul-Badi Abou-Samra

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Abstract

Objectives

A decrease in Emergency Department (ED) visits for cardiac conditions has recently been reported from the US and Western Europe due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The data are still scant, and the correlation between cardiac symptoms and confirmed diagnoses are not available. There are no reports on changes in ED volumes at a national level, or from countries in the Asia-Middle Eastern region. We report data from national referral centers for tertiary care and cardiac care centers in Qatar, which see > 80% of cardiac emergencies in the country.

Results

We analyzed 102,033 ED visits in the COVID-19-era (March–April 2020 and 2019) and determined the proportion presenting for cardiac symptoms and their confirmed diagnoses. We observed a 16–37% decline in ED volumes overall, with a 25–50% decline in patients presenting with cardiac symptoms in March and April 2020 compared with March and April 2019. Among those presenting with cardiac symptoms, we observed a 24–43% decline in cardiac diagnoses in March and April 2020 compared with March and April 2019.

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  1. Version published to 10.1186/s13104-020-05381-y
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.04.20167908: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.08.04.20167908v1 on medRxiv