Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Monitoring of Children with Heart Disease in Consultation

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND AND AIM: we report the impact of COVID-19 on the follow-up in pediatric cardiology consultations and its implications on the delay in management, especially for patients with congenital heart disease at the Mohammed VI University Hospital in Marrakech METHOD: This is a telephone survey concerning 200 patients followed in pediatric cardiology consultation at the Mother Child Hospital of the Mohammed VI University Hospital in Marrakech during the period from March 2020 to June 2020. RESULT(S) We identified 200 patients among 317 during the telephone survey, 117 were unreachable by telephone;the mean age was 5 years and 6 months with intervals ranging from 11 months to 16 years. Most of our patients had a low socio-economic level, 60% followed by an average of 39%. As for the reason why the patients missed their consultations 38% had not been able to consult because of the confinement, 28% thought that there were no more consultations, 25% were afraid of being contaminated by the covid -19 in the hospital, 12% had no means of transport, 11% had no authorization to travel, 10% were confined to more than 200 km from the hospital, 6% were unaware that appointments were postponed and finally 2% had not been able to consult for lack of means. CONCLUSION(S) It is necessary to take measures to recover patients who have missed their consultation because of this pandemic.