Performance of Primary Angioplasty for STEMI during the COVID-19 Outbreak

There has been concern whether the declining cases of ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak associate with primary angioplasty performance. We assessed the performance of primary angioplasty in a tertiary care hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia, by comparing the door-to-device (DTD) time and thrombolysis in myocardial infarction (TIMI) flow after angioplasty between two periods of admission: during the outbreak of COVID-19 (March 1 to May 31, 2020) and before the outbreak (March 1, to May 31, 2019). Overall, there was a relative reduction of 44% for STEMI admission during the outbreak ( n  = 116) compared with before the outbreak ( N  = 208). Compared with before the outbreak period ( n  = 141), STEMI patients who admitted during the outbreak and received primary angioplasty ( n  = 70) had similar median symptom onset-to-angioplasty center admission (360 minutes for each group), similar to radial access uptake (90 vs. 89.4%, p  = 0.88) and left anterior descending infarct-related artery (54.3 vs. 58.9%, p  = 0.52). The median DTD time and total ischemia time were longer (104 vs. 81 minutes, p  < 0.001, and 475.5 vs. 449 minutes, p  = 0.43, respectively). However, the final achievement of TIMI 3 flow was similar (87.1 vs. 87.2%), and so was the in-hospital mortality (5.7 vs. 7.8%). During the COVID-19 outbreak, we found a longer DTD time for primary angioplasty, but the achievement of final TIMI 3 flow and in-hospital mortality were similar as compared with before the outbreak. Thus, primary angioplasty should remain the standard of care for STEMI during the COVID-19 outbreak.