Heart attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic were more likely to result in heart failure compared with heart attacks one year earlier, according to research presented today at Heart Failure 2021, an online scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).
“Heart attack patients waited an average of 14 hours to get help during the pandemic, with some delaying for nearly two days. That compares to a delay of six hours in the previous year,” said study author Dr. Ali Aldujeli of the Hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania. “This gap may have been one contributor to the higher incidence of subsequent heart failure.”
Urgent treatment for heart attacks is essential to restore the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle. A longer duration of oxygen deprivation is associated with a greater area of damaged muscle and reduced pump function (called ejection fraction), which is a type of heart failure.
This study compared treatment delays, post-treatment ejection fraction, and decompensated heart failure hospitalisation rate in heart attack patients before versus during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more at European Society of Cardiology
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