Department of Cardiothoracic, Transplantation and Vascular Surgery, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany.
Artif Organs. 2020 Aug;44(8):873-876. doi: 10.1111/aor.13744. Epub 2020 Jul 19.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a pandemic touching thousands of people all around the world. Patients supported with left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) are affected by long-standing cardiovascular diseases and subjected to variations of the normal cardiovascular physiology, thus requiring an even closer monitoring during the COVID-19 outbreak. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a drastic reduction in routine clinical activities and a consequent risk of looser connections between LVAD patients and their referring center. Potential deleterious effects of such a situation can be a delayed recognition of LVAD-related complications, misdiagnosis of COVID-19, and impaired social and psychological well-being for patients and families. As one of the largest LVAD programs worldwide, we designed a sustainable and enforceable telemonitoring algorithm which can be easily adapted to every LVAD center so as to maintain optimal quality of care for LVAD patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）是一场全球性的大流行，影响了全球成千上万的人。接受左心室辅助装置（LVAD）治疗的患者患有长期的心血管疾病，并受到正常心血管生理学变化的影响，因此在 COVID-19 爆发期间需要更密切的监测。然而，COVID-19 大流行导致常规临床活动急剧减少，LVAD 患者与其转介中心之间的联系相应减弱。这种情况可能产生的潜在有害影响包括 LVAD 相关并发症的识别延迟、COVID-19 的误诊以及患者和家庭的社会和心理健康受损。作为全球最大的 LVAD 项目之一，我们设计了一种可持续且可执行的远程监测算法，可以轻松适用于每个 LVAD 中心，以便在 COVID-19 大流行期间为 LVAD 患者提供最佳护理质量。
