ArticleClinical research in cardiology : official journal of the German Cardiac Society2022
Medical and cardio-vascular emergency department visits during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020: is there a collateral damage? A retrospective routine data analysis.
Article in Clinical research in cardiology : official journal of the German Cardiac Society, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- [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
- 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
- Catheter based left atrial appendage closure in-hospital outcomes in Germany from 2016 to 2020.Clinical research in cardiology : official journal of the German Cardiac Society · 2024Article
- Recruiting patients for falls prevention in the emergency department - worth the challenge.BMC geriatrics · 2023Observational
- Modelling variations of emergency attendances using data on community mobility, climate and air pollution.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- Factors influencing the occurrence of ambulatory care sensitive conditions in the emergency department - a single-center cross-sectional study.Frontiers in medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
30 authors at 19 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn this retrospective routine data analysis, we investigate the number of emergency department (ED) consultations during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 in Germany compared to the previous year with a special focus on numbers of myocardial infarction and acute heart failure.
methodsAggregated case numbers for the two consecutive years 2019 and 2020 were obtained from 24 university hospitals and 9 non-university hospitals in Germany and assessed by age, gender, triage scores, disposition, care level and by ICD-10 codes including the tracer diagnoses myocardial infarction (I21) and heart failure (I50).
resultsA total of 2,216,627 ED consultations were analyzed, of which 1,178,470 occurred in 2019 and 1,038,157 in 2020. The median deviation in case numbers between 2019 and 2020 was - 14% [CI (- 11)-(- 16)]. After a marked drop in all cases in the first COVID-19 wave in spring 2020, case numbers normalized during the summer. Thereafter starting in calendar week 39 case numbers constantly declined until the end of the year 2020. The decline in case numbers predominantly concerned younger [- 16%; CI (- 13)-(- 19)], less urgent [- 18%; CI (- 12)-(- 22)] and non-admitted cases [- 17%; CI (- 13)-(- 20)] in particular during the second wave. During the entire observation period admissions for chest pain [- 13%; CI (- 21)-2], myocardial infarction [- 2%; CI (- 9)-11] and heart failure [- 2%; CI (- 10)-6] were less affected and remained comparable to the previous year.
conclusionsED visits were noticeably reduced during both SARS-CoV-2 pandemic waves in Germany but cardiovascular diagnoses were less affected and no refractory increase was noted. However, long-term effects cannot be ruled out and need to be analysed in future studies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.