Hypertensive urgencies during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in a tertiary hospital setting: a U-shaped alarming curve.

Introduction: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic provoked unprecedented disturbance in hypertension care, while alarming concerns arose about its long-term consequences. We investigated the trends of emergency visits and admissions regarding uncontrolled hypertension in order to assess the impact of COVID-19 spread on population behavior towards hypertension urgencies during its first wave. Material and methods: Data from daily unscheduled visits and admission counts in the Cardiology sector were collected from the Emergency Department database of a tertiary General Hospital in Athens, Greece for the period January 15th to July 15th 2020. These data were compared with those from the previous year. Cases of patients who presented with hypertensive urgency or who were admitted due to uncontrolled hypertension were separately analyzed. Results: A total of 7,373 patient records were analyzed. Hypertension urgency cases demonstrated a U-shaped distribution in 2020, showing a declining trend during the rapid virus spread, an image that was reversed after the transmission rate's decline. COVID-19 incidence in Greece was inversely associated with uncontrolled hypertension admissions during its declining phase (r = -0.64, p = 0.009), whereas total attendance exhibited a similar correlation during the first and the following months of the pandemic (r = 0.677, p = 0.031, r = -0.789, p = 0.001). Uncontrolled hypertension rate on admission was positively related to the national incidence of COVID-19 cases during the first months of 2020 (r = 0.82, p = 0.045). Conclusions: Hypertensive urgency-related visits followed a U-shape distribution during the pandemic's first wave with the attendance nadir coinciding with the virus spread peak. This is a complex phenomenon, closely related to increased levels of public stress, disruptions in health care services and to a lesser extent to the imposed restrictions in transportation. The initial relative increase in uncontrolled hypertension-related admissions rate, combined with the later increase of hypertensive urgencies may be indicative of blood pressure deregulation among the studied population, which is multifactorial and potentially detrimental.

The mystery of "missing" visits in an emergency cardiology department, in the era of COVID-19.; a time-series analysis in a tertiary Greek General Hospital.

BACKGROUND: In the era of the current COVID-19 health crisis, the aim of the present study was to explore population behavior as regards the visits in the Εmergency Cardiology department (ECD) of a tertiary General Hospital that does not hospitalize SARS-CoV-2 infected patients METHODS AND RESULTS: Daily number of visits at the EDC and admissions to Cardiology Wards and Intensive Care Unit of a tertiary General Hospital, in Athens, Greece, were retrieved from hospital's database (January 1st-April 30th 2018, 2019 and 2020). A highly significant reduction in the visits at ECD of the hospital during March and April 2020 was observed as compared with January and February of the same year (p for linear trend < ·001); in particular the number of visits was 41.1% lower in March 2020 and 32.7% lower in April 2020, as compared to January 2020. As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases throughout the country increased (i.e., from February 26th to April 2nd) the number of visits at ECD decreased (p = 0.01), whereas, the opposite was observed in the period afterwards (p = 0.01).The number of acute Myocardial infarctions (MI) cases in March 2020 was the lowest compared to the entire three year period (p < 0·001); however, the number of acute MI cases in April 2020 was doubled as compared to March 2020, but still was lower than the preceding years (p < 0·001). CONCLUSIONS: It is hard to explain the mystery of the "missing" emergency hospital visits. However, if this decline in cardiovascular disease related hospital visits is "true", it is something that needs to be rigorously studied, to learn how to keep these rates down.

Correction to: The mystery of "missing" visits in an emergency cardiology department, in the era of COVID-19.; a time-series analysis in a tertiary Greek General Hospital.

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake.