Acute Stroke Care during COVID-19: National Data.

Area of Science:

• Neurology
• Public Health
• Epidemiology

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted global healthcare systems.
• Lockdown measures and public health crises impacted timely medical care delivery.
• The acute treatment of stroke patients faced unprecedented challenges during the pandemic.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on acute stroke treatment in Poland.
• To analyze changes in stroke hospitalizations and treatment outcomes.
• To assess the effect of the pandemic on stroke care quality.

Main Methods:

• Utilized national hospitalization data for stroke as a primary diagnosis from Poland's National Health Fund.
• Employed Poisson regression to analyze the significance of changes in hospital admissions.
• Applied the "N-1" Chi-squared test to compare proportions.

Main Results:

• Stroke hospitalizations decreased by 8.28% during the pandemic, with a notable drop of 22.02% in April 2020.
• The rate of thrombolysis for stroke patients experienced a significant monthly decrease of 15.51% in November.
• There was no statistically significant change observed in the overall number of in-hospital deaths among stroke patients.

Conclusions:

• The COVID-19 pandemic caused considerable disruption to the acute care pathway for stroke patients in Poland.
• Despite disruptions, evidence suggests that the quality of acute stroke care was not severely compromised.
• Further research is needed to understand long-term impacts and optimize stroke care during health crises.