Quality of healthcare and admission rates for acute cardiac events during COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective cohort study on ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction in China

Objective: To evaluate changes in admission rates for and quality of healthcare of ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) during the period of the COVID-19 outbreak and postoutbreak.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective study among patients with STEMI in the outbreak time and the postoutbreak time.

Design: To examine the changes in the admission rates and in quality of healthcare, by comparison between periods of the postoutbreak and the outbreak, and between the postoutbreak and the corresponding periods.

Setting: Data for this analysis were included from patients discharge diagnosed with STEMI from all the hospitals of Suzhou in each month of the year until the end of July 2020.

Participants: 1965 STEMI admissions.

Primary and secondary outcome measures: The primary outcome was the number of moecondary outcomnthly STEMI admissions, and the secondary outcomes were the quality metrics of STEMI healthcare.

Results: There were a 53% and 38% fall in daily admissions at the phase of outbreak and postoutbreak, compared with the 2019 corresponding. There remained a gap in actual number of postoutbreak admissions at 306 and the predicted number at 497, an estimated 26 deaths due to STEMI would have been caused by not seeking healthcare. Postoutbreak period of 2020 compared with corresponding period of 2019, the percentage of cases transferred by ambulance decreased from 9.3% to 4.2% (p=0.013), the door-to-balloon median time increased from 17.5 to 34.0 min (p=0.001) and the rate of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) therapy declined from 71.3% to 60.1% (p=0.002).

Conclusions: The impact of public health restrictions may lead to unexpected out-of-hospital deaths and compromised quality of healthcare for acute cardiac events. Delay or absence in patients should be continuously considered avoiding the secondary disaster of the pandemic. System delay should be modifiable for reversing the worst clinical outcomes from the COVID-19 outbreak, by coordination measures with focus on the balance between timely PCI procedure and minimising contamination of cardiac catheterisation rooms.