• Giuseppe Boriani, Pietro Palmisano, Federico Guerra, Matteo Bertini, Gabriele Zanotto, Carlo Lavalle, Pasquale Notarstefano, Michele Accogli, Giovanni Bisignani, Giovanni Battista Forleo, Maurizio Landolina, Antonio D'Onofrio, Renato Ricci, Roberto De Ponti, and AIAC Ricerca Network Investigators.
• Cardiology Division, Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Policlinico Di Modena, Via del Pozzo 71, 41121, Modena, Italy. giuseppe.boriani@unimore.it.
• Intern Emerg Med. 2020 Nov 1; 15 (8): 144514561445-1456.

AbstractCOVID-19 outbreak had a major impact on the organization of care in Italy, and a survey to evaluate provision of for arrhythmia during COVID-19 outbreak (March-April 2020) was launched. A total of 104 physicians from 84 Italian arrhythmia centres took part in the survey. The vast majority of participating centres (95.2%) reported a significant reduction in the number of elective pacemaker implantations during the outbreak period compared to the corresponding two months of year 2019 (50.0% of centres reported a reduction of > 50%). Similarly, 92.9% of participating centres reported a significant reduction in the number of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) implantations for primary prevention, and 72.6% a significant reduction of ICD implantations for secondary prevention (> 50% in 65.5 and 44.0% of the centres, respectively). The majority of participating centres (77.4%) reported a significant reduction in the number of elective ablations (> 50% in 65.5% of the centres). Also the interventional procedures performed in an emergency setting, as well as acute management of atrial fibrillation had a marked reduction, thus leading to the conclusion that the impact of COVID-19 was disrupting the entire organization of health care, with a massive impact on the activities and procedures related to arrhythmia management in Italy.

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