Heart patients avoid the hospital en masse for fear of being infected with the coronavirus. Visits of people with acute heart problems to the Emergency Room and the emergency room have more than halved in two weeks. The demand for help for chest pain, a symptom of a heart attack, has decreased by 45 percent compared to two weeks ago and compared to the same weeks last year.
This is evident from a representative study by the Dutch Society of Cardiology (NVVC) among cardiologists in fifteen hospitals spread across the country. They all show the same picture, including hospitals in provinces with few corona infections.
NVVC chairman Bert van Rossum is very concerned. “People who have an infarct at home and are not treated right away suffer permanent damage. They can develop heart failure or arrhythmias, which means their quality of life really diminishes.” While there is enough capacity: only three out of the twelve available beds are now occupied in Van Rossum’s own heart monitoring department in the VUmc in Amsterdam.
Put aside your fear
On behalf of all cardiologists, Van Rossum appeals to people with acute complaints such as chest pain, shortness of breath or sudden wasting. “Put aside your fear and report your complaints anyway. Then we will see if you have to go to the hospital. We do everything we can to create a safe environment, so that you cannot be infected with the corona virus.” Incidentally, this applies just as much to people with neurological disorders as tias, strokes or cerebral haemorrhages, Van Rossum emphasizes.
Harteraad, the center of expertise for living with cardiovascular diseases, sees that chronic heart patients have also become afraid of the hospital. Director Anke Vervoord: “In the first place, they avoid care for fear of being infected or not to put an extra burden on the already busy hospital. In addition, it has become clear in recent days that patients are very afraid that they will not have a place in the intensive care unit. receive care if needed. Everyone is concerned about the shortage of IC beds “.
Cardiologist Van Rossum points out that heart patients rarely come to IC. “We do the treatments in catheterization rooms, not in the OR. And with us they are on cardiac monitoring, not in intensive care.”
Joachim Stuifbergen (47) has been a heart patient for years. He is on a path to a heart transplant or a supporting heart. This month he should have a bicycle test in the hospital. Next month he should receive a new ICD: an internal heart rhythm box. Yet he strongly tends to cancel those agreements. “I am afraid of being infected with the coronavirus. As a heart patient, you are already not healthy and you are extra sensitive to such a virus, it seems. It reinforces each other. That is a great risk.”
Telemonitoring
Harteraad’s director Vervoord does have a few suggestions for persuading chronic heart patients. “When patients cancel an appointment, they usually do not talk to the medical specialist, but to someone who schedules appointments. Then there is no substantive medical conversation. I would like to call the cardiologists to consider whether they can play a role in this. that those people have the reassurance of taking that step. “
It can also help if care is organized differently. “Is it an idea to keep some hospitals completely corona free, so that heart patients can go there without fear of contamination?”
Finally, she points to the opportunities of telemonitoring. This is only used on a clinical scale, in patients with heart failure. The idea is that heart patients are monitored remotely. “Now is a good time to think about it. Let’s join hands and make it available to those who are helped quickly.”
Work is already underway on a project for tele-cardiac rehabilitation, in which patients who are rehabilitating from a heart attack or from a surgery can be monitored remotely and assisted in their recovery. Financing is not yet complete. “This can be a start.”
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