Letter to the Editor: CSANZ Consensus Guidelines for Interventional Cardiology Services Delivery During COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia and New Zealand

COVID-19 and Heart, Lung and Circulation: Riding the 2020 Waves of Change in Australia & New Zealand✰

“…Correspondence received has been in strong support of the Statements while drawing attention to associated concerns [17,18]. Sarathy et al cautioned cardiac services against implementing a fibrinolysis strategy for all patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) [17,19].…”

“…Correspondence received has been in strong support of the Statements while drawing attention to associated concerns [17,18]. Sarathy et al cautioned cardiac services against implementing a fibrinolysis strategy for all patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) [17,19]. They reasserted that primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) remains the standard of care and that, as indicated in the relevant Statements, fibrinolysis should be reserved for select circumstances only [1,9].…”

“…Correspondence received has been in strong support of the Statements while drawing attention to associated concerns [ 17 , 18 ]. Sarathy et al.…”

“…The take-home messages from these “collateral damage” scenarios are that patients should still be encouraged to seek medical care, and especially prompt medical care for cardiac and cerebrovascular emergencies [ 18 , 19 , [21] , [22] , [23] ], and that hospital workflows and processes, while needing to be flexible in these “unprecedented times”, should not be altered to such a degree that patients needing urgent medical care are disadvantaged [ 17 , 18 ].…”

Collateral Damage: The Cardiovascular Cost of Suppressing COVID-19 Transmission in Australia

“…clear evidence of ongoing severe ischaemia by the presence of symptoms and electrocardiographic changes refractory to medical therapy or haemodynamic instability [12]. It is concerning that some Australian centres have interpreted these statements as a rationale to potentially convert to a routine thrombolysis strategy for all STEMI patients, unnecessarily compromising the standard of care for a vulnerable subpopulation within a community with an extremely low prevalence of COVID-19 [13].…”