Objectives: The study aims to investigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on physical activity and frequency of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) therapies of patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices.
Methods and results: Physical activity, heart rate and ICD-therapies were assessed via routine remote monitoring over two years. We focussed on a 338-day period during COVID-19 pandemic that was divided in 6 time-intervals defined by public health interventions and compared to the previous regular year. Paired nonparametric longitudinal analysis was performed to detect differences between time-intervals. To model effects of age, sex and time we applied a nonparametric ANOVA-type-statistic. 147 patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices were analysed. Longitudinal analysis of physical activity in 2019 and 2020 showed a specific weekly and seasonal pattern. Physical activity was reduced during the pandemic (mean daily physical activity 2019: 12.4% vs. 2020: 11.5%; p<0.0001) with the strongest reductions (fold changes 0.885/0.889, p<0.0001/p<0.0001) during the two lockdown-periods. In older patients (>70 years), physical activity was decreased in every time-interval of the year 2020. In time-intervals of eased restrictions, physical activity of younger patients (≤70 years) was not different compared to 2019. No variation in mean heart rate, arrhythmia-burden and count of ICD-therapies was found.
Conclusion: Physical activity shows fluctuations dependent on days of the week and time of the year. During the pandemic, physical activity was reduced in patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices with the strongest reductions during lockdown-periods. Younger patients resumed former levels of physical activity in times of eased restrictions while older patients remained less active. Thus, activation of the elderly population is important to prevent long-term health impairments due to the pandemic.