The Tamil Nadu Accident and Emergency Care Initiative-Myocardial Infarction Management Programme has issued recommendations for cardiac management of patients, in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Officials said that cardiology departments of hospitals were told to alter their style of functioning during COVID-19. “We cannot treat patients as we normally do. Any patient who comes into the emergency should be considered a potential COVID-19 patient. Only emergency and life-saving interventional procedures should be done, and conservative management should be followed as far as possible. All elective procedures can be postponed,” an official said.
He added that tele-consultation was being encouraged. Patients usually collect medications for two weeks. In this situation, departments have been told to issue medications for one or two months, so that patients can travel less, he said.
In the list of recommendations, G. Justin Paul, State heart disease nodal officer, has recommended that routine outpatient consultation visits and routine outpatient investigations such as treadmill exercise test and routine imaging such as chest X-ray and cardiac CT be avoided/postponed. Postponing scheduled hospitalisations for elective procedures at the OP level was also recommended.
Only life-saving emergency procedures should be done in the cardiac catheterisation laboratory. It should be disinfected after a procedure on a patient who has not been ruled out for COVID-19 infection.
The programme has laid down specific recommendations for patients suspected to have symptoms of COVID-19 as well as confirmed COVID-19 patients. For in-patients with cardiac emergencies, they should be treated in dedicated COVID ICUs/wards with dedicated cardiac equipment. Echocardiography, if needed, should be performed in the designated COVID-19 wards, with a separate machine assigned for the purpose.
