Arq. Bras. Cardiol. 2022; 118(4): 754-755
Confinement and Cardiovascular Diagnosis in a Pandemic Season: The Difficult Balance on the Razor’s Edge
This Short Editorial is referred by the Research article "The Impact of COVID-19 on Diagnosis of Heart Disease in Latin America an INCAPS COVID Sub-analysis".
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a strong impact on healthcare delivery worldwide. Cardiovascular diseases, including their acute forms, were no exception. In the first weeks of the pandemic, at the end of the first quarter of 2020, there was a clear reduction in resources to health services, both in scheduled care and in admissions for acute coronary syndromes, with a strong impact on the immediate prognosis and with future consequences not fully documented.,
In addition to the direct impact of the virus on the myocardium, which causes considerable morbidity and mortality,– there is also a reduction in access to health care – which occurred both as a result of a massive channeling of resources from the different health systems to the fighting the pandemic, as well as the population’s fear of resorting to these services during the pandemic – is having an important impact on the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease. Although the real dimension of this impact on the prognosis of patients with and without COVID has not yet been established, its importance likely exceeds the effects directly determined by the pandemic.
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