The Impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on acute stroke care in Slovakia (data from across the country).

Gdovinová, Zuzana; Vitková, Marianna; Baráková, Anna; Cvopová, Alena

BACKGROUND A few studies using data from regional databases have recently pointed to a decreased number of patients with stroke. The aim of our work was to describe country-level data (the number of patients with stroke, proportion of patients with acute stroke, TIAs, patients treated with IVT or MT, DNT and ONT) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovakia. METHODS The study examined data from the stroke register at the National Health Information Centre. Data from three time periods (1: March-April 2020; 2: March-April 2019 and 3: January-February 2020) were compared using an independent sample t-test and the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney two sample rank-sum test. RESULTS The number of stroke patients admitted to hospitals in Slovakia during the COVID-19 period showed a decrease (1673 versus 2328 in period 2 and 2155 in period 3). The proportions of patients with TIA remained the same in periods 1 and 2 (9.7 vs 11.7%) and in periods 1 and 3 (9.7 vs 11.8%). The percentage of patients treated with IVT during the pandemic (22.4%) did not differ from period 2 (20.0%) or period 3 (21.4%). No difference was found in the rate of MT between the COVID-19 period (10.2%) and the same period in 2019 (10.7%) and January-February 2020 (13.1%). Median DNT remained unchanged in periods 1 (30 min), 2 (35 min) and 3 (30 min) no differences were found in median ONT in periods 1 (130 min), 2 (130 min) and 3 (140 min). CONCLUSION We found a decreased number of stroke patients during the COVID-19 outbreak in Slovakia, but no evidence for a change in the quality of acute stroke care.