ArticleDeutsches Arzteblatt international2020
Medical Emergencies During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Article in Deutsches Arzteblatt international, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 78 papers.
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Who cites it
78 citing papers in PubMed, 119 citations in OpenAlex.
- [Structured triage in the emergency department via intelligent assistant service OPTINOFA : Results of a multicenter, cluster-randomized and controlled interventional study in Germany].Medizinische Klinik, Intensivmedizin und Notfallmedizin · 2025Trial
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- Prescription of guideline-directed medical therapy in heart failure: impact on mortality and readmission.ESC heart failure · 2025Article
- Establishing Syndromic Surveillance of Acute Coronary Syndrome, Myocardial Infarction, and Stroke: Registry Study Based on Routine Data From German Emergency Departments.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Article
- Implementation report on pioneering federated data access for the German National Emergency Department Data Registry.NPJ digital medicine · 2025Article
- [Rescue Missions with Patients with Psychiatric and Psychosocial Symptoms: An Analysis from Eastern Lower Saxony].Psychiatrische Praxis · 2024Article
- The COVID-19 Pandemic and Emergencies in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery: An Analysis of Patients Presenting to Emergency Rooms in South-West Germany: A Bi-Center Study.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The impact of SARS-CoV-2 on emergency health care demand: inverse relationship between COVID-like illnesses and ED accesses in Genoa, Italy.Journal of preventive medicine and hygiene · 2024Article
- Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Mortality and Hospitalization during the COVID-19 Pandemic Compared with before the Pandemic: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of personalized medicine · 2024Review
- Article
- Diverticulitis patient care during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany-a retrospective nationwide population-based cohort study.Langenbeck's archives of surgery · 2023Article
- Modelling variations of emergency attendances using data on community mobility, climate and air pollution.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Incidences for Fractures 2017-2021: What Do We Learn from the COVID-19 Pandemic?Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Emergency Department (ED) Admissions in the Only Hospital of City Center ED.Cureus · 2023Article
- [ECMO support during the first two waves of the corona pandemic-a survey of high case volume centers in Germany].Medizinische Klinik, Intensivmedizin und Notfallmedizin · 2023Article
- Pre-Hospital Emergency Medical Services Utilization Amid COVID-19 in 2020: Descriptive Study Based on Routinely Collected Dispatch Data in Bavaria, Germany.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Necrotising Fasciitis During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Australian Hospital Network Experience.World journal of surgery · 2023Article
- Identification of low-acuity attendances in routine clinical information documented in German Emergency Departments.BMC emergency medicine · 2023Article
18 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 6 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn this study, we investigate the number of emergency room consultations during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 in Germany compared to figures from the previous year.
methodsCase numbers from calendar weeks 1 through 22 of the two consecutive years 2019 and 2020 were obtained from 29 university hospitals and 7 non-university hospitals in Germany. Information was also obtained on the patients' age, sex, and urgency, along with the type of case (outpatient/inpatient), admitting ward, and a small number of tracer diagnoses (I21, myocardial infarction; J44, COPD; and I61, I63, I64, G45, stroke /TIA), as well as on the number of COVID-19 cases and of tests performed for SARS-CoV-2, as a measure of the number of cases in which COVID-19 was suspected or at least included in the differential diagnoses.
resultsA total of 1 022 007 emergency room consultations were analyzed, of which 546 940 took place in 2019 and 475 067 in 2020. The number of consultations with a positive test for the COVID-19 pathogen was 3122. The total number of emergency room consultations in the observation period was 13% lower in 2020 than in 2019, with a maximum drop by 38% coinciding with the highest number of COVID-19 cases (calendar week 14; 572 cases). After the initiation of interpersonal contact restrictions in 2020, there was a marked drop in COVID-19 case numbers, by a mean of -240 cases per week per emergency room (95% confidence interval [-284; -128]). There was a rise in case numbers thereafter, by a mean of 17 patients per week [14; 19], and the number of cases of myocardial infarction returned fully to the level seen in 2019.
conclusionIn Germany, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant drop in medical emergencies of all kinds presenting to the nation's emergency departments. A recovery effect began to be seen as early as calendar week 15, but the levels seen in 2019 were not yet reached overall by calendar week 22; only the prevalence of myocardial infarction had renormalized by then. The reasons for this require further investigation.
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