• Beomjin Park, Woori Bae, Hyo Joon Kim, Jee Yong Lim, Sang Hoon Oh, Chun Song Youn, Han Joon Kim, Kyu Nam Park, and Hwan Song.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, Seoul Saint Mary's Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea.
• Am J Emerg Med. 2022 Aug 1; 58: 100105100-105.

IntroductionThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic situation is a state that has had a great impact on the medical system and society. To respond to the pandemic situation, various methods, such as a pre-triage system, are being implemented in the emergency medical field. However, there are insufficient studies on the effects of this pandemic situation on patients visiting the emergency department (ED), especially those with cardio/cerebrovascular diseases (CVD)1 classified as time-dependent emergencies.MethodsWe performed a retrospective analysis of a cohort of patients from April 2020 to December 2020 (April 2020 was when the pre-triage system was established) compared to a parallel comparison patient cohort from 2019. The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality. CVD was defined by the patient's final diagnosis.ResultsDuring the same period, the number of patients who had visited the ED after COVID-19 had decreased to 79.1% of the number of patients who had visited the ED before COVID-19. The overall patient mortality and the mortality in the patients cardiovascular disease had both increased, while the mortality from cerebrovascular disease did not increase. Meanwhile, the ED length of stay had increased in all patients but did not increase in the patients with cardiovascular disease.ConclusionAs with prior studies conducted in other regions, in our study, the total number of ED visits were decreased compared to before COVID-19. The overall mortality had increased, particularly in the patients with cardiovascular disease.Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

15 keywords...

hide…