Management Strategies for Patients After CABG Surgery in the Outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background

The novel coronavirus 2019 pandemic (COVID-19) has quickly spread over the world and affected over 100 countries so far. Patients with pre-existing cardiovascular disease may have a higher risk of infection of COVID-19 and worse outcomes than others. To improve the outcome during the pandemic, management strategies for the patients recovering from coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery need to be reconsidered.

Methods

Some precaution advices including self-protection, blood glucose and blood pressure controlling are recommended for the patients recovering from CABG during the pandemic. They are encouraged to communicate with doctors by telephone or Internet when COVID-19 related symptoms such as cough, fever and dyspnea occur. As a follow-up strategy for patients after CABG surgery, cardiac biomarkers and CTA could also be helpful to the diagnosis of COVID-19. Some medications being investigated for COVID-19 therapy may have side effects relevant to cardiovascular disease. Appropriate personal protection equipment (PPE) is necessary for cardiovascular health-care workers operating in clinical settings.

Results

There was zero out of over 300 follow-up patients after CABG surgery confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 from January to June 2020. No cardiovascular health-care workers were reported to be infected neither in the Second Xiangya Hospital during the pandemic.

Conclusion

The management strategy here we proposed could improve the outcome of patients after CABG during the pandemic and benefit both cardiovascular patients and health-care workers.

Keywords:

• cardiovascular patients
• CABG
• COVID-19 pandemic

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the patients and their families for participating in this study.

Ethics Statement

Subjects have given their written informed consent for the case details to be published. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University in China. All research studies on humans have been performed in accordance with the principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki. Written informed consent was obtained from all study participants or their legal representatives or guardians.

Disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare for this work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81500187, 81502710).