Weber, Thomas, Andrzej, Januszewicz, Rosei, Enrico Agabiti, Tsioufis, Konstantinos, Okorie, Michael, Stergiou, George S, Volpe, Massimo, Kreutz, Reinhold, Abraham, Gyorgy, Azizi, Michel, Barna, Istvan, Barroso, Weimar Kunz Sebba, Brguljan, Jana, Chapman, Neil, Rajkumar, Chakravarthi and others, (2021) The corona-virus disease 2019 pandemic compromised routine care for hypertension: a survey conducted among excellence centers of the European Society of Hypertension. Journal of Hypertension, 39 (1). pp. 190-195. ISSN 0263-6352

PDF - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike. Download (346kB)

Abstract

Background:
The Covid-19 pandemic caused a shutdown of healthcare systems in many countries. We explored the impact on hypertension care in the Excellence Center (EC) network of the European Society of Hypertension.

Methods:
We conducted a 17-question electronic survey among ECs.

Results:
Overall, 52 ECs from 20 European and three non-European countries participated, providing hypertension service for a median of 1500 hypertensive patients per center per year. Eighty-five percent of the ECs reported a shutdown lasting for 9 weeks (range 0–16). The number of patients treated per week decreased by 90%: from a median of 50 (range 10–400) before the pandemic to a median of 5.0 (range 0–150) during the pandemic (P < 0.0001). 60% of patients (range 0–100%) declared limited access to medical consultations. The majority of ECs (57%) could not provide 24-h ambulatory BP monitoring, whereas a median of 63% (range 0–100%) of the patients were regularly performing home BP monitoring. In the majority (75%) of the ECs, hypertension service returned to normal after the first wave of the pandemic. In 66% of the ECs, the physicians received many questions regarding the use of renin–angiotensin system (RAS) blockers. Stopping RAS-blocker therapy (in a few patients) either by patients or physicians was reported in 27 and 36.5% of the ECs.

Conclusion:
Patient care in hypertension ECs was compromised during the Covid-19-related shutdown. These data highlight the necessity to develop new strategies for hypertension care including virtual clinics to maintain services during challenging times.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Covid-19, blood pressure, hypertension routine care, renin-angiotensin system inhibitors
Schools and Departments:	Brighton and Sussex Medical School > Clinical and Experimental Medicine
SWORD Depositor:	Mx Elements Account
Depositing User:	Mx Elements Account
Date Deposited:	18 Dec 2020 11:41
Last Modified:	25 Apr 2023 13:40
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/95666

View download statistics for this item

📧 Request an update