Hospital admissions of acute cerebrovascular diseases during and after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: a state-wide experience from Austria
Open Access
- 27 February 2021
- journal article
- editorial
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Zeitschrift für Neurologie
- Vol. 268 (10), 3584-3588
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-021-10488-8
Abstract
We investigated hospital admission rates for the entire spectrum of acute cerebrovascular diseases and of recanalization treatments for ischaemic stroke (IS) in the Austrian federal state of Styria during and also after the first coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) wave. We retrospectively identified all patients with transient ischaemic attack (TIA), IS and non-traumatic intracranial haemorrhage (ICH; including intracerebral, subdural and subarachnoid bleeding types) admitted to one of the 11 public hospitals in Styria (covering > 95% of inhospital cerebrovascular events in this region). Information was extracted from the electronic medical documentation network connecting all public Styrian hospitals. We analysed two periods of interest: (1) three peak months of the first COVID-19 wave (March–May 2020), and (2) three recovery months thereafter (June–August 2020), compared to respective periods 4 years prior (2016–2019) using Poisson regression. In the three peak months of the first COVID-19 wave, there was an overall decline in hospital admissions for acute cerebrovascular diseases (RR = 0.83, 95% CI 0.78–0.89, p < 0.001), which was significant for TIA (RR = 0.61, 95% CI 0.52–0.72, p < 0.001) and ICH (0.78, 95% CI 0.67–0.91, p = 0.02), but not for IS (RR = 0.93, 95% CI 0.85–1, p = 0.08). Thrombolysis and thrombectomy numbers were not different compared to respective months 4 years prior. In the recovery period after the first COVID-19 wave, TIA (RR = 0.82, 95% CI 0.71–0.96, p = 0.011) and ICH (RR = 0.86, 95% CI 0.74–0.99, p = 0.045) hospitalizations remained lower, while the frequency of IS and recanalization treatments was unchanged. In this state-wide analysis covering all types of acute cerebrovascular diseases, hospital admissions for TIA and ICH were reduced during and also after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, but hospitalizations and recanalization treatments for IS were not affected in these two periods.Funding Information
- Medical University of Graz
This publication has 14 references indexed in Scilit:
- Effect of COVID-19 on First-Time Acute Stroke and Transient Ischemic Attack Admission Rates and Prognosis in DenmarkCirculation, 2020
- Stroke care in Italy at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic: a lesson to learnZeitschrift für Neurologie, 2020
- Effect of COVID-19 on Emergent Stroke CareStroke, 2020
- Collateral Effect of Covid-19 on Stroke Evaluation in the United StatesThe New England Journal of Medicine, 2020
- Impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on acute stroke careZeitschrift für Neurologie, 2020
- Acute Stroke in Times of the COVID-19 PandemicStroke, 2020
- Acute Stroke Care Is at Risk in the Era of COVID-19Stroke, 2020
- Impact of the COVID-19 Epidemic on Stroke Care and Potential SolutionsStroke, 2020
- Stroke care during the COVID‐19 pandemic: experience from three large European countriesEuropean Journal of Neurology, 2020
- Ambient Pollutants and Spontaneous Intracerebral Hemorrhage in Greater BostonStroke, 2018