Salih METİN, Hüseyin AYGÜN, Cemile HAKİ

The effect of COVID-19 pandemic on stroke admissions to a city

Aims: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about significant changes in healthcare around the world. The idea that hospital admissions due to cerebrovascular diseases may be affected during global epidemics made us do this study. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the effects of the pandemic and curfew restrictions on stroke applications and admissions in Bursa at the local level. Methods: Our study was conducted by retrospectively scanning the patients who received treatment for cerebrovascular diseases in our hospital between 01.01.2018 and 31.12.2021. The admission dates, ages and International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) codes of the patients included in the study were recorded. ICD-10 codes were categorized as bleeding (I60/I61/I62), infarct (I63), nonspecific (I64/I67), other (I65/I66/I68/I69) for use in analyses. Patients under the age of 18 and patients with missing file data were excluded from the study. The files of a total of 6997 patients were accessed. Results: When in this study look at the number of patients by years, it was seen that there were 1326 people in 2018, 1562 people in 2019, 1916 people in 2020, and 2187 people in 2021. It is noteworthy that if we call the years 2018-2019, when there is no COVID-19 pandemic, as prepandemic, and if we call the years 2020-2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic is experienced, as pandemic, the cases due to infarction (I63) increase approximately twice. In the chi-square analysis we performed between categorical diagnoses and years, a statistical difference was found between years and diagnoses (p<0.001) Conclusion: We have raised awareness about improving stroke treatment and the importance of early diagnosis and treatment. Because stroke and its complications affect human life badly. Knowing the increase and decrease of acute stroke in pandemic and non-pandemic periods, we would shed light on the pandemics we will experience in the future.

Keywords:

Acute stroke, COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine,

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