COVID-19 and Disruptive Modifications to Cardiac Critical Care Delivery

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a major unanticipated stress on the workforce, organizational structure, systems of care, and critical resource supplies. To ensure provider safety, to maximize efficiency, and to optimize patient outcomes, health systems need to be agile. Critical care cardiologists may be uniquely positioned to treat the numerous respiratory and cardiovascular complications of the SARS-CoV-2 and support clinicians without critical care training who may be suddenly asked to care for critically ill patients. This review draws upon the experiences of colleagues from heavily impacted regions of the United States and Europe, as well as lessons learned from military mass casualty medicine. This review offers pragmatic suggestions on how to implement scalable models for critical care delivery, cultivate educational tools for team training, and embrace technologies (e.g., telemedicine) to enable effective collaboration despite social distancing imperatives.

Impact of Fear of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mental Health of Nurses in Pakistan

“…The leaders should help and support the healthcare staff to make a morally challenging decision in the current pandemic. This could be achieved through discussion based on Schwarz rounds (Katz et al, 2020;Maffoni et al, 2020), which allows healthcare workers to openly discuss the social and emotional challenges they are facing during patient care. Leaders are human, too, supportive leaders make it possible to protect their follower's mental health (Jones et al, 2012).…”

Reduced rate of admissions for acute coronary syndromes during the COVID-19 pandemic: an observational analysis from a tertiary hospital in Germany

“…Many studies have been conducted to investigate this phenomenon [6,13,18]. First, the fear of contagion at the hospital may have discouraged access to emergency medical facilities.…”

Obesity Accompanying COVID‐19: The Role of Epicardial Fat

“…Although clinically very relevant, it remains difficult to elucidate the mechanisms by which SARS-Cov-2 severity is increased in the context of obesity. As reported by Katz JN et al (2), 28% of hospitalised patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) presented cardiac complications including myocarditis, arrhythmias, heart failure (HF) and sudden death. Considering that myocardial response in COVID-19 is closely associated with in-hospital mortality, local biological effects on myocardial tissue from epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) is warrant further discussion.…”