• Adnan I Qureshi, Samiat Agunbiade, Wei Huang, Iqra N Akhtar, Michael G Abraham, Naveed Akhtar, Fawaz Al-Mufti, Emrah Aytac, Ferhat Balgetir, Mikayel Grigoryan, Camilo R Gomez, Ameer E Hassan, Vishal Jani, Nazli A Janjua, Liqun Jiao, Rakesh Khatri, Jawad F Kirmani, Adam Kobayashi, Osman Kozak, Jun Lee, Iryna Lobanova, Ossama Yassin Mansour, Alberto Maud, Mikael Mazighi, Michel Piotin, Gustavo J Rodriguez, Farhan Siddiq, SuriM Fareed KMFKSt. Cloud Hospital, St. Cloud, MN., and Wondwossen G Tekle.
• Zeenat Qureshi Stroke Institute and Department of Neurology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO.
• J Neuroimaging. 2021 Jan 1; 31 (1): 171-179.

Background And PurposeThe effect of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on performance of neuroendovascular procedures has not been quantified.MethodsWe performed an audit of performance of neuroendovascular procedures at 18 institutions (seven countries) for two periods; January-April 2019 and 2020, to identify changes in various core procedures. We divided the region where the hospital was located based on the median value of total number of COVID-19 cases per 100,00 population-into high and low prevalent regions.ResultsBetween 2019 and 2020, there was a reduction in number of cerebral angiograms (30.9% reduction), mechanical thrombectomy (8% reduction), carotid artery stent placement for symptomatic (22.7% reduction) and asymptomatic (43.4% reduction) stenoses, intracranial angioplasty and/or stent placement (45% reduction), and endovascular treatment of unruptured intracranial aneurysms (44.6% reduction) and ruptured (22.9% reduction) and unruptured brain arteriovenous malformations (66.4% reduction). There was an increase in the treatment of ruptured intracranial aneurysms (10% increase) and other neuroendovascular procedures (34.9% increase). There was no relationship between procedural volume change and intuitional location in high or low COVID-19 prevalent regions. The procedural volume reduction was mainly observed in March-April 2020.ConclusionsWe provided an international multicenter view of changes in neuroendovascular practices to better understand the gaps in provision of care and identify individual procedures, which are susceptible to change.© 2020 American Society of Neuroimaging.

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