• Peter Ong, Stefanie Schäfer, Louisa Karagülle-Dörrenhaus, Clara Rau, Sarah Fröbel, Sebastian Spaich, and Raffi Bekeredjian.
• Abteilung für Kardiologie und Angiologie, Zentrum für Innere Medizin III, Robert-Bosch-Krankenhaus Gmbh, Stuttgart.
• Dtsch. Med. Wochenschr. 2023 Feb 1; 148 (3): e8e13e8-e13.

BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 pandemic medical treatments including emergencies were often delayed, in part because of fear of an infection with Sars-CoV-2. Even patients with an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) were affected by these circumstances. In the present study we provide a systematic comparison of patients with ACS during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to a control group.MethodsThis is a retrospective cross-sectional study including all patients admitted with an ACS (STEMI, NSTEMI, unstable angina) undergoing coronary angiography between March 2019 and June 2019 (group A) and between March 2020 and June 2020 (group B). Demographic factors, cardiovascular risk factors and procedural data (extent of coronary disease, clinical diagnose, revascularisation strategy and outcome, use of mechanical support devices, door-to-needle time and in-hospital mortality) were compared.Results469 patients were included in the present study (239 patients in group A and 230 in group B, mean age 69 years, 71% male). Compared to group A there were fewer patients with STEMI and unstable angina (p=0,033) but more patients with NSTEMI (p=0,047) in group B. Patients in group B had less often single vessel disease (p=0,001) but in contrast more often triple vessel disease compared to group A (p=0,052).ConclusionDespite overall comparable numbers of ACS patients those admitted during the COVID-19 pandemic were more frequently diagnosed with NSTEMI and had a larger extent of coronary disease compared to a control group.The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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