Afraid ERs are full?
Hospitals across Southern Illinois have noticed a strange side-effect to the COVID-19 pandemic — fewer patients are showing up in emergency rooms with heart attack and stroke symptoms.
“We are extremely worried about this,” said Dr. Alejandro Hornik, a neurologist and neuroscience medical director with Southern Illinois Healthcare Brain and Spine Institute.
People, in general, are driving less and working less, so doctors understand why the number of trauma patients they are seeing has decreased. However, the stay-at-home order does not have the same effect on the risk of stroke and heart attack, Hornik said.
He is seeing about half the number of stroke patients compared to 2019.
Dr. Raed Al Dallow, a cardiologist with Prairie Cardiovascular and medical director of invasive cardiovascular services at SIH, is also noticing fewer patients with symptoms of heart attack. Prairie Cardiovascular treated about half the number heart attack patients in March and a little more than a third in April over the same months in 2019.
He is connected to a group of cardiologists from Indiana and Missouri. They have noticed similar reductions in Chicago, Indianapolis and St. Louis.
Herby Voss, marketing director at Heartland Regional Medical Center in Marion, said the hospital emergency department is seeing a similar reduction in the number of patients. “At the same time, we are hearing stories of people not seeking ER treatment out of fear of contracting COVID or fear that the ER is full,” Voss said.
“We want to seek to understand what makes them stay home,” Al Dallow said.
The doctors also believe fear is keeping people away. Some are afraid of catching COVID-19. Others think health care workers will not have time to treat them. Because hospitals have instituted no visitor policies, some are afraid of leaving loved ones.
All of the health care professionals stress that choosing to delay or not seek treatment can be deadly or result in lifelong disability.