Ohio State University, Columbus

- Most interventions scheduled with patients in the short term that are considered elective should most likely be postponed in order to limit infection risk
- However, interventions which are to be performed to assess a possible life-threatening symptom or condition must still occur and should be carried out accordingly
- These various situations must be assessed on a case by case basis in order to make sure each patient is receiving the proper level of care based on their condition
- This paper provides a graphic, Figure 1, specific to SHD which describes various patient conditions and their severity in order to provide a clearer picture on what visits could be considered elective versus essential
- However, Figure 1 is not based upon a linear scale and is heavily dependent upon other risk factors at a specific facility such as the occupancy of COVID-19 positive patients within the ICU, the paper implies that with low COVID-19 ICU occupancy, urgent procedures should most likely be performed. But if there is high COVID-19 ICU occupancy, urgent procedures should be more heavily screened based off a risk/benefit profile to assess if putting the patient in danger during recovery outweighs their current circumstances.


Rescheduling and Reprioritizing Patient Visits Based Off Current Condition and Relative Patient Risk

Chung, C. J., Nazif, T. M., Wolbinski, M., Hakemi, E., Lebehn, M., Brandwein, R., Rezende, C. P., Doolittle, J., Rabbani, L., Uriel, N., Schwartz, A., Biviano, A., Wan, E., Hathaway, L., Hahn, R., Khalique, O., Hamid, N., Ng, V., Patel, A., Vahl, T., … Kodali, S. K. (2020). Restructuring Structural Heart Disease Practice During the COVID-19 Pandemic: JACC Review Topic of the Week. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 75(23), 2974–2983. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2020.04.009

URL: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32278716/


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