According to a number of observations, heart patients have gone to the doctor less often in the past two years for fear of contracting the new corona virus.
According to this, even patients with an acute heart attack and those who were plagued by shortness of breath or other symptoms due to a sudden worsening of their heart failure often stayed at home instead of calling the emergency doctor immediately.
As a result, many doctors fear that the collateral damage could be significant both for those affected themselves and for the healthcare system.
So far, however, it has been unclear whether these observations can be generalized and, if so, what health consequences this has or could have in the near future.
The results of a comprehensive analysis based on the data from 158 relevant studies in almost 50 countries now provide more clarity.
An international research team led by cardiologist Ramesh Nadarajah from the University of Leeds in Great Britain investigated whether and how much the medical care of heart patients had changed in the past two years.
To do this, they examined how many patients had visited a hospital or doctor’s office between January 2019 and December 2021 – i.e. before and during the corona pandemic – because of cardiovascular disease.
As the authors report in the "European Heart Journal", far fewer people with heart disease actually sought medical help during the Corona crisis than in the previous year.
The decline in examinations and therapies extended across the entire spectrum of cardiovascular diseases and affected, among other things, diagnostic and therapeutic catheter interventions in the heart, the recording of electrical heart currents to clarify cardiac arrhythmias, the repair and replacement of defective heart valves, and implantation cardiac pacemakers, as well as bypass operations and the treatment of tachycardia with special catheters.
Particularly worrying: In the two Corona years, the number of patients treated in hospital for an acute heart attack or heart failure has
decreased by 20 to 35 percent compared to the previous year.
However, rapid therapeutic action is essential for both diseases.
Residents of old people's and nursing homes are particularly affected
Because the longer it takes until the heart artery affected by the infarction is opened or the sudden loss of heart strength is addressed, the more likely it is that the person affected will suffer a serious or even fatal complication.
Some of the studies considered in the present meta-analysis also come to the conclusion that more people died of cardiovascular attacks in the first few months of the pandemic than in the period before.
These were primarily residents of retirement and nursing homes.
However, patients with cardiovascular diseases not only avoided the hospitals during the corona pandemic.
As the results of the meta-analysis reveal, many of them also stayed away from the doctor's office.
Accordingly, the number of visits to the family doctor or cardiologist has decreased by more than 70 percent compared to the previous year.
Whether and to what extent this harmed them is not clear from the investigation.
Since not every cardiac therapy is beneficial, sometimes less is more, as even some cardiologists openly admit.
Of course, this does not apply to urgent measures such as the treatment of an acute heart attack or cardiac insufficiency.
Friedhelm Beyersdorf, former Medical Director of the Clinic for Cardiovascular Surgery at the University Hospital in Freiburg, describes the consequences of patients with serious cardiovascular diseases not consulting a doctor: "Only recently, with a patient who missed annual check-ups after heart surgery during the pandemic, discovered an extensive tear in the aorta.” The heart surgeon adds that the man was extremely lucky that the vessel had not ruptured in the meantime.