Early experience of aortic surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK: A multicentre study

Effect of COVID-19 on outpatient services in patients with aortovascular disease: a UK multicentre study

INTRODUCTION

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has disrupted healthcare services worldwide. Outpatient services have necessarily been restructured to accommodate COVID-19 patients and to maintain social distancing measures. The aim of our study was to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected outpatient healthcare provision for patients with aortovascular disease.

METHODS

In this prospective study, a standardised proforma was circulated to seven aortic centres in the UK. Data on outpatient encounters were collected from March to July 2020. Captured data included demographic details, disease pattern, type of encounter (face-to-face, video or telephone), clinic outcome and availability of imaging.

RESULTS

A total of 632 patients were included in the study, including 164 (25.9%) new referrals. In this cohort, clinic settings have shifted towards remote consultations, with 424 (67.1%) patients undergoing telephone appointments. Over a third of new patients (34.8%) had a delay in diagnostic tests, which might be attributable to the indirect effects of COVID-19. A total of 102 (16.1%) patients were added to a surgical waiting list following clinic.

CONCLUSIONS

To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study of outpatient activity during the COVID-19 pandemic in patients with aortovascular disease. We demonstrate how the speciality has adapted to accommodate government-endorsed changes in healthcare provision, and question how COVID-19 may have affected access to diagnostics. Finally, we discuss how COVID-19 will affect patients added to surgical waiting lists.

Cardiac Surgery Outcomes During the COVID-19 Pandemic Worsened Across All Socioeconomic Statuses

BACKGROUND

Increasing socioeconomic distress has been associated with worse cardiac surgery outcomes. The extent to which the pandemic affected cardiac surgical access and outcomes remains unknown. We sought to examine the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and outcomes after cardiac surgery by socioeconomic status.

METHODS

All patients undergoing a Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) index operation in a regional collaborative, the Virginia Cardiac Services Quality Initiative (2011-2022), were analyzed. Patients were stratified by timing of surgery before vs during the COVID-19 pandemic (March 13, 2020). Hierarchic logistic regression assessed the relationship between the pandemic and operative mortality, major morbidity, and cost, adjusting for the Distressed Communities Index (DCI), STS predicted risk of mortality, intraoperative characteristics, and hospital random effect.

RESULTS

A total of 37,769 patients across 17 centers were included. Of these, 7269 patients (19.7%) underwent surgery during the pandemic. On average, patients during the pandemic were less socioeconomically distressed (DCI 37.4 vs DCI 41.9; P < .001) and had a lower STS predicted risk of mortality (2.16% vs 2.53%, P < .001). After risk adjustment, the pandemic was significantly associated with increased mortality (odds ratio 1.398; 95% CI, 1.179-1.657; P < .001), cost (+$4823, P < .001), and STS failure to rescue (odds ratio 1.37; 95% CI, 1.10-1.70; P = .005). The negative impact of the pandemic on mortality and cost was similar regardless of DCI.

CONCLUSIONS

Across all socioeconomic statuses, the pandemic is associated with higher cost and greater risk-adjusted mortality, perhaps related to a resource-constrained health care system. More patients during the pandemic were from less distressed communities, raising concern for access to care in distressed communities.

COVID-19 and aortic disease: a practical systematic review of the literature on management and outcomes

Since the advent of the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, vascular specialists have faced dramatic changes in clinical and surgical practice. Although COVID-19 pulmonary signs and symptoms were the most pertinent problems initially, in the long term cardiovascular complications became the most fearsome, with poor outcomes in terms of morbidity and mortality. Algorithms and decision-making procedures have been modified, not only to treat new clinical findings in COVID-19 positive patients, but also to avoid complications related to pulmonary and systemic infections. Additionally, COVID-19 negative patients experienced challenging management, due to hospital crowding, the risk of nosocomial COVID-19 transmission, and pandemic emergencies. In this context, aortic interventions were subject to several difficulties. First, in COVID-19 positive patients, there was the onset of new pathological scenarios including thrombotic manifestations and the subsequent complications. Second, in both COVID-19 negative and positive patients, there was a need to deliver optimal treatment with acceptable perioperative risks, forcing a rethinking of decisionmaking especially in terms of indications for treatments. The aim of this systematic review is to present evidence published on COVID-19 and aortic-related issues, highlighting some challenging aspects regarding management, treatment and outcomes.

Impact of COVID-19 on aortic operations

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has profoundly affected all aspects of medicine and surgery. Vascular surgery practice and interventions were also forced to change in order to deal with new COVID-19-related priorities and emergencies. In this setting, difficulties in aortic disease management were two-fold: new vascular complications related to COVID-19 infection and the need to guarantee prompt and correct treatment for the general "non-COVID-19" population. Furthermore, discomfort deriving from precautions to minimize the risk of virus transmission among patients and among health care professionals, the need to separate COVID-19-positive from COVID-19-negative patients, and the high incidence of postoperative complications in COVID-19 cases created a challenging scenario for cardiac operations. The aim of this review was to provide evidence derived from the published literature (case reports, case series, multicenter experience, and expert opinion) on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on aortic vascular surgery services and interventions, describing COVID-19-related findings, intraoperative and postoperative outcomes, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on noninfectious aortic patients.

Early experience of aortic surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK: A multicentre study

BACKGROUND

A significant restructuring of the healthcare services has taken place since the declaration of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, with elective surgery put on hold to concentrate intensive care resources to treat COVID-19 as well as to protect patients who are waiting for relatively low risk surgery from exposure to potentially infected hospital environment.

METHODS

Multicentre study, with 19 participating centers, to define the impact of the pandemic on the provision of aortovascular services and patients' outcomes after having adapted the thresholds for intervention to guarantee access to treatment for emergency and urgent conditions. Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data, including all patients with aortovascular conditions admitted for surgical or conservative treatment from the 1st March to the 20th May 2020.

RESULTS

A total of 189 patients were analyzed, and 182 underwent surgery. Diagnosis included: aneurysm (45%), acute aortic syndrome (44%), pseudoaneurysm (4%), aortic valve endocarditis (4%), and other (3%). Timing for surgery was: emergency (40%), urgent (34%), or elective (26%). In-hospital mortality was 12%. Thirteen patients were diagnosed with COVID-19 during the peri-operative period, and this subgroup was not associated with a higher mortality.

CONCLUSIONS

There was a significant change in service provision for aortovascular patients in the UK. Although the emergency and urgent surgical activity were maintained, elective treatment was minimal during early months of the pandemic. The preoperative COVID-19 screening protocol, combined with self-isolation and shielding, contributed to the low incidence of COVID-19 in our series and a mortality similar to that of pre-pandemic outcomes.