Israelis who experienced heart attacks during the coronavirus pandemic risked their lives by delaying a trip to the emergency room due to fear of contracting the coronavirus, a study published last week found, the Times of Israel reported.

Patients delayed getting to the hospital during March and April of 2020 by an hour longer than in 2018. The results were based on data gathered from 13 hospitals in Israel between March 9 and April 30, the peak of Israel’s first coronavirus wave, and the corresponding period in 2018.

Contrary to worldwide figures showing that heart attack patients shied away from hospitals altogether during the coronavirus, the number of Israelis hospitalized due to heart attacks remained the same in both years. However, it took heart attack patients three hours to arrive at a hospital from the onset of symptoms in 2020 compared to two hours in 2018.

Unfortunately, the hour’s delay had significant and far-reaching effects on the patients’ conditions upon arrival at the hospital – almost twice as many patients arrived at hospitals in a state of cardiogenic shock or heart failure in 2020 over 2018.

Prof. Shlomi Matetzky, head of the Intensive Cardiac Care Department at the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, one of the doctors involved in the study, said that the more time that passes from the onset of symptoms to arrival at a hospital, the more severe the heart damage can be. There was a 60% increase in heart attack patients experiencing heart failure, malignant ventricular arrhythmia and death in 2020 than in 2018.

He also noted that some patients may have even died at home due to the delay, which means that their data was not included in the study.

As far as heart attack patients worldwide, a European Society of Cardiology survey, based on data from 141 countries, found that the number of heart attack patients arriving at emergency rooms dropped by over 50% during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)