Journal of cardiac surgery
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The current Covid-19 pandemic is a significant global health threat. The outbreak has profoundly affected all healthcare professionals, including heart surgeons. To adapt to these exceptional circumstances, cardiac surgeons had to change their practice significantly. We herein discuss the challenges and broad implications of the Covid-19 pandemic from the perspective of the heart surgeons.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency room visits have drastically decreased for non-COVID conditions such as appendicitis, heart attack, and stroke. Patients may be avoiding seeking medical attention for fear of catching the deadly condition or as an unintended consequence of stay-at-home orders. ⋯ This case illustrates an example of "collateral damage" caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. What would have been a standard ST-elevation myocardial infarction treated with timely and successful stenting of a dominant right coronary artery occlusion, became a much more dangerous postinfarction ventricular septal defect; all because of a 2-day delay in seeking medical attention by an unsuspecting patient.
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With the ongoing coronavirus, journals and the media have extensively covered the impacts on doctors, nurses, physician assistants, and other healthcare workers. However, one group that has rarely been mentioned despite being significantly impacted is medical students and medical education overall. This piece, prepared by both a medical student and a cardiothoracic surgeon with a long career in academic medicine, discusses the recent history of medical education and how it has led to issues now with distance-based learning due to COVID-19. It concludes with a call to action for the medical education system to adapt so it can meet the needs of healthcare learners during COVID-19 and even beyond.
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We received a response to our Editorial from a group in Brazil that raised valuable concerns about the struggles in transforming medical education in low-income countries. Here, we address the concerns they raised that reinforce the global need for a "Coalition for Medical Education."