• Ignasi Garcia-Olive, Francesc Lopez Seguí, Guillem Hernandez Guillamet, Josep Vidal-Alaball, Jorge Abad, and Antoni Rosell.
• Department of Respiratory Medicine, Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol, Badalona, Barcelona, Spain; Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), Badalona, Barcelona, Spain; Department of Medicine, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: igarcia.germanstrias@gencat.cat.
• Med Clin (Barc). 2023 May 12; 160 (9): 392396392-396.

ObjectiveThe COVID-19 pandemic has had a great effect on the management of chronic diseases, by limiting the access to primary care and to diagnostic procedures, causing a decline in the incidence of most diseases. Our aim was to analyze the impact of the pandemic on primary care new diagnoses of respiratory diseases.MethodsObservational retrospective study performed to describe the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence of respiratory diseases according to primary care codification. Incidence rate ratio between pre-pandemic and pandemic period was calculated.ResultsWe found a decrease in the incidence of respiratory conditions (IRR 0.65) during the pandemic period. When we compared the different groups of diseases according to ICD-10, we found a significant decrease in the number of new cases during the pandemic period, except in the case of pulmonary tuberculosis, abscesses or necrosis of the lungs and other respiratory complications (J95). Instead, we found increases in flu and pneumonia (IRR 2.17) and respiratory interstitial diseases (IRR 1.41).ConclusionThere has been a decrease in new diagnosis of most respiratory diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic.Copyright © 2023 Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

21 keywords...

hide…