PLoS ONE (Jan 2021)

Relationship between out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and COVID-19 during the first and second pandemic wave. The importance of monitoring COVID-19 incidence

  • Enrico Baldi,
  • Roberto Primi,
  • Sara Bendotti,
  • Alessia Currao,
  • Sara Compagnoni,
  • Francesca Romana Gentile,
  • Giuseppe Maria Sechi,
  • Claudio Mare,
  • Alessandra Palo,
  • Enrico Contri,
  • Vincenza Ronchi,
  • Giuseppe Bergamini,
  • Francesca Reali,
  • Pierpaolo Parogni,
  • Fabio Facchin,
  • Ugo Rizzi,
  • Daniele Bussi,
  • Simone Ruggeri,
  • Sabina Campi,
  • Paola Centineo,
  • Roberto De Ponti,
  • Luigi Oltrona Visconti,
  • Simone Savastano,
  • all the Lombardia CARe researchers

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 11

Abstract

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Background The relationship between COVID-19 and out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCAs) has been shown during different phases of the first pandemic wave, but little is known about how to predict where cardiac arrests will increase in case of a third peak. Aim To seek for a correlation between the OHCAs and COVID-19 daily incidence both during the two pandemic waves at a provincial level. Methods We considered all the OHCAs occurred in the provinces of Pavia, Lodi, Cremona, Mantua and Varese, in Lombardy Region (Italy), from 21/02/2020 to 31/12/2020. We divided the study period into period 1, the first 157 days after the outbreak and including the first pandemic wave and period 2, the second 158 days including the second pandemic wave. We calculated the cumulative and daily incidence of OHCA and COVID-19 for the whole territory and for each province for both periods. Results A significant correlation between the daily incidence of COVID-19 and the daily incidence of OHCAs was observed both during the first and the second pandemic period in the whole territory (R = 0.4, pConclusions Our results suggest that strictly monitoring the pandemic trend may help in predict which territories will be more likely to experience an OHCAs’ increase. That may also serve as a guide to re-allocate properly health resources in case of further pandemic waves.