Document Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2021-03-29Keywords
Acute stroke therapyCOVID-19
Epidemiology
Intracerebral hemorrahage
Ischaemic stroke
mechanical thrombectomy
Cardiovascular Diseases
Clinical Epidemiology
Epidemiology
Health Services Administration
Health Services Research
Infectious Disease
Nervous System Diseases
Virus Diseases
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Show full item recordAbstract
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic led to profound changes in the organization of health care systems worldwide. AIMS: We sought to measure the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the volumes for mechanical thrombectomy (MT), stroke, and intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) hospitalizations over a 3-month period at the height of the pandemic (March 1 to May 31, 2020) compared with two control 3-month periods (immediately preceding and one year prior). METHODS: Retrospective, observational, international study, across 6 continents, 40 countries, and 187 comprehensive stroke centers. The diagnoses were identified by their ICD-10 codes and/or classifications in stroke databases at participating centers. RESULTS: The hospitalization volumes for any stroke, ICH, and MT were 26,699, 4,002, and 5,191 in the 3 months immediately before versus 21,576, 3,540, and 4,533 during the first 3 pandemic months, representing declines of 19.2% (95%CI,-19.7 to -18.7), 11.5% (95%CI,-12.6 to -10.6), and 12.7% (95%CI,-13.6 to -11.8), respectively. The decreases were noted across centers with high, mid, and low COVID-19 hospitalization burden, and also across high, mid, and low volume stroke/MT centers. High-volume COVID-19 centers (-20.5%) had greater declines in MT volumes than mid- (-10.1%) and low-volume (-8.7%) centers (p < 0.0001). There was a 1.5% stroke rate across 54,366 COVID-19 hospitalizations. SARS-CoV-2 infection was noted in 3.9% (784/20,250) of all stroke admissions. CONCLUSION: The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a global decline in the volume of overall stroke hospitalizations, MT procedures, and ICH admission volumes. Despite geographic variations, these volume reductions were observed regardless of COVID-19 hospitalization burden and pre-pandemic stroke/MT volumes.Source
SVIN COVID-19 global registry. Global impact of COVID-19 on stroke care. Int J Stroke. 2021 Mar 29:1747493021991652. doi: 10.1177/1747493021991652. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33459583; PMCID: PMC8010375. Link to article on publisher's site
DOI
10.1177/1747493021991652Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/27377PubMed ID
33459583Notes
For the full list of authors, see article.
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Copyright © 2021 World Stroke Organization. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Distribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1177/1747493021991652
Scopus Count
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Copyright © 2021 World Stroke Organization. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).