One-Year Recording of Cardiac Arrhythmias in a Non-Infected Population with Cardiac Implantable Devices During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Yao-Ji Wang, Qi-Qi Jin, Cheng Zheng, Jia-Xuan Lin, Yi-Fan Lin, Que Xu, Jin Li, Jia-Feng Lin Department of Cardiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Jia-Feng Lin; Jin Li Email [email protected]; [email protected]: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was associated with a higher risk of arrhythmia in infected patients. However, there are no reports about the effect of the ongoing pandemic on arrhythmias in the non-infected population. We measured the arrhythmia burden in a non-infected population with cardiac implantable devices.Methods: The arrhythmia burden during the COVID-19 pandemic was compared to a 6-month interval in the pre-COVID-19 period. The COVID-19 pandemic was divided into high-risk (17 January 2020 to 16 March 2020) and low-risk periods (17 March 2020 to 17 July 2020) according to whether there were locally infected patients. Arrhythmia burdens were compared among the pre-COVID-19, high-risk, and low-risk periods.Results: A total of 219 patients with 1859 episodes were included. We observed a larger proportion of patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) during the COVID-19 pandemic (38.36% vs 26.03%, p = 0.006). There was not significantly more ventricular arrhythmia during the COVID period than the pre-COVID-19 period (p > 0.05). During the high-risk period, daily frequency of non-sustained ventricular tachycardia (NSVT) (0.0172, 0.0475 vs 0.0109, 0.0164, p < 0.05), atrial tachycardia (AT) (0.0345, 0.0518 vs 0.0164, 0.0219 p

Keywords

• covid-19
• arrhythmia
• cardiac implantable device
• non-infected population
• radiofrequency ablation