Impact of COVID-19 situation on non COVID myocardial infarction admissions

Type of funding sources: None.

COVID-19 outbreak nudged worldwide health systems to reallocate resources from from other areas to help fighting against this novel infectious disease. Consequently, accuracy and quality care of cardiovascular patients was partially compromised. Moreover, fear to get to hospital made patients to stay home despite the presence of symptoms that would have led them to search medical aid in other scenarios.

We aimed to demonstrate that non COVID myocardial infarction admissions after the outbreak were more complex in term of coding and length of stay (LOS) compared to those previous to pandemic situation.

We analyzed complexity coding weight (CW) parameters (according to current Spanish Coding manual CIE-10)obtained from local healthcare authorities of 903 admissions from Balearic Islands Region from January 2019 to December 2021. Admissions with higher coding value were considered more complex. We performed an interrupted time series using pre pandemic admissions as a control group.

2020 showed a lower number of admissions (268/mean CW: 0,651), specially form March to June compared to 2019 (347/mean CW: 0,631) and 2021 (288/ mean CW: 0,627). CW values and LOS, trend and comparison are showed in figures.

Number of myocardial infarction admissions were reduced in 2020. Complexity trend to mildly increase in 2020. No significant variations in LOS where found. Further analysis with data from other regions would be useful to confirm this trend in the whole country.