University Hospitals and EMS crews urging heart patients to seek medical attention and not avoid ERs

WOIO ^ | May 19, 2020 | Jen Picciano

[george76]

The coronavirus does not cure heart attacks..

CLEVELAND, Ohio -“We know that we have many patients, staying at home suffering these heart attacks not seeking care,” said University Hospitals Cardiologist, Dr. Greg Stefano.

Throughout this pandemic regular doctor’s visits have been cancelled and patients have been avoiding emergency rooms and calling 911, for fear of being exposed at hospitals.

But that is a dangerous trend for heart patients.

64 year Andrew Gruber didn’t hesitate when he felt symptoms of a heart attack on April 16th.

Muson EMS got to him within about 5 minutes, performed an EKG at the scene, transmitted information to University Hospitals Geauga, and activated their cath lab team.

Within twenty minutes his doctor was working on him on the operating table.

“He told me that if I got there any later, I would have had worse heart damage than I did and I might have not made it. Going there right away saved my life,” he said.

Right around the middle of March, March 15th we had a big drop in calls. Our call volume pretty much plummeted and we were lucky to one a day at that point,” said Munson Fire Chief Mike Vatty.

The United States is seeing about a 40 percent decrease in cardiac patients through this pandemic.

A lot of them are heart attack patients, who are ignoring minor, so-called warning shots.

UH Cardiologist Dr. Greg Stefano says this is putting patients at unnecessary risk for life-long disabling conditions like heart failure.

“People need to go to the emergency room if they have any kind of medical problems. The fear initially was that emergency room there was a chance that they could catch this there,” said Vatty.

But he says the public needs to know that the emergency rooms are open for business.

“The hospital is a very safe place to be. You cannot have this concept of “I’m worried about going there to contract something. It’s just not correct,” said Dr. Stefano.

“I was pretty nervous because your wife can’t go or none of your family members. They’re not even allowed to visit,” said Gruber.

He admits it wasn’t a normal hospital stay, but he encourages others to act as quickly as he did.

[Mears]

Happening all over.Our local hospital even did a video about 3 weeks ago explaining this,that it is safe.

..

[Vendome]

A lot of people would sooner die, than catch Corona virus

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Way to go, media and politicians. What a mess. A lot of lives are being lost because of the fear-porn types.

[meyer]

The mass fear induced by the DNC-inspired media has killed many more than the ‘Rona.

[george76]

Some medical experts fear more people are dying from untreated emergencies than from the coronavirus..

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3839629/posts

[cherry]

no, no, no....they must continue to self isolate and do social distancing......its the virus...nothing else matters....not cardiac arrest, not suicide, not cancer, not GI bleed.

[Vendome]

Costing you money?

Well, FOAD.

[lapsus calami]

 

 

It has. There's been a lot of carnage around my vicinity. What angers me is that there was not any contingency plan to maintain care for the chronically and terminally ill. Shut the doors and pulled the plug, and that was it, leaving people hanging. That was savage and has racked up a body count around here beyond what the virus did.

 

 

[george76]

The inpatient stroke unit at Stanford University Medical Center in California usually has 12 to 15 patients, said its director, Dr. Gregory Albers. On one recent day in April, there were none at all, something that had never happened. .

Back at the Cleveland Clinic, a man arrived with stroke symptoms on April 15. According to Dr. Thomas Waters, an emergency room physician, the man had waited two days to come in because he was afraid of the coronavirus. There was nothing doctors could do to prevent permanent brain damage.

[GnuThere]

We had a large local hospital create a 50 bed COVID ICU with great fanfare and media coverage, but end up begging for run of the mill patients, as they were left with a deserted ER and clinics.
I had to visit the ER myself and got the fastest care EVER. It was a ghost town.

[lapsus calami]

 

 

I get that, but people wouldn't need to go to the emergency department if their continuing critical care hadn't been interrupted in the first place. Relying on emergency departments to take up a lot of slack can be an iffy proposition, since depending on the area and facility they may be very limited in room, resources and the level of trauma they can even address. They're really set up to diagnose, stabilize, patch up and either admit/transfer for further care which may have limitations of its own due to other consequences of the shutdown or discharge with instructions to contact their primary/specialist - whose office would be unavailable. The way the shutdown was administered created a backlog of misery that promises to be a continuing ordeal to address, complicated by clinics and hospitals all over that have laid off staff.

 

 

[george76]

Various field hospitals had capacity to treat 14,817 coronavirus patients across the US.- treated only 1,177 patients.. like the NYC virtually empty 2,500-bed Javits Center..

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/faucis-follies-us-coronavirus-field-hospitals-shut-without-treating-single-patient-garbage-models-used-us-experts/

Mayo Clinic furloughed or reduced pay of 30,000 employees - surgical volume is at 25 to 30 percent of normal.

Other health care institutions, like Olmsted Medical Center, have taken similar steps.

Oklahoma City hospital closing due to lack of patients.. The 238-bed acute-care facility is shut down.. doctors, nurses & other staff are sent home because of very low patient census..

[lapsus calami]

 

 

The situation we have here is that there is a whole lot of rural, spread out population that will have smaller hospitals and community clinics with limited emergency department resources that may have limited hours if not on-call only, which means that a patient will have a heck of a drive to get to the nearest facility that has the trauma resources to stabilize and treat their issue. EMS response time may be dreadful so stuffing the afflicted into a car and taking directly off is a better option than waiting over an hour (perhaps 2) for a skilled first responder response, though at times driving the route towards the ambulance and meeting up with them on the roadway is also an option. I'm fortunate to be in an area that has a lot of medical resources, with a fairly quick EMS response, though I know a number of folk who do not and have to plan accordingly.