Adult cardiac surgery in Trinidad and Tobago during the COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons from a developing country.
J Card Surg
; 35(12): 3387-3390, 2020 Dec.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-730733
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND AIM:
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has seen the cancellation of elective cardiac surgeries worldwide. Here we report the experience of a cardiac surgery unit in a developing country in response to the COVID-19 crisis.METHODS:
From 6th April to 12th June 2020, 58 patients underwent urgent or emergency cardiac surgery. Data was reviewed from a prospectively entered unit-maintained cardiac surgery database. To ensure safe delivery of care to patients, a series of strict measures were implemented which included a parallel healthcare system maintaining a COVID-19 cold site, social isolation of patients for one to 2 weeks before surgery, polymerase chain reaction testing for COVID-19, 72 hours before surgery, discrete staff assigned only to cardiac surgical cases socially isolated for 2 weeks as necessary.RESULTS:
The mean age at surgery was 59.7 ± 11 years and 41 (70.7%) were male. Fifty-two patients were hypertensive (90%), and 32 were diabetic (55.2%). There were three emergency type A aortic dissections. Forty-seven patients underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgery with all but three performed off-pump. Fourteen cases required blood product transfusion. One patient had postoperative pneumonia associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The median length of stay was 5.7 ± 1.8 days. All patients were discharged home after rehabilitation. There were no cases of COVID-19 infection among healthcare workers during the study period.CONCLUSION:
These strategies allowed us to maintain a service for urgent and emergency procedures and may prove useful for larger countries when there is decrease in COVID-19 cases and planning for the restart of elective cardiac surgery.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pandemics
/
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19
/
Heart Diseases
/
Cardiac Surgical Procedures
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Country/Region as subject:
English Caribbean
/
Trinidad and Tobago
Language:
English
Journal:
J Card Surg
Journal subject:
Cardiology
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Jocs.14975
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