Division of Interventional Cardiology, Department of Cardiology, Santa Chiara Hospital, Trento, Italy -
Division of Interventional Cardiology, Department of Cardiology, Santa Chiara Hospital, Trento, Italy.
Minerva Cardiol Angiol. 2022 Aug;70(4):468-475. doi: 10.23736/S2724-5683.20.05477-8. Epub 2021 Mar 11.
Northern Italy has been one of the most affected area in the world by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The healthcare system has been overwhelmed by the huge number of patients in need of mechanical ventilation or intensive care, resulting in a delay of treatment of patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), due to a crash in STEMI networks and closure of a certain number of hub centers, and to a delay in patients' seeking for medical evaluation for chest pain or angina-equivalent symptoms.
In the Trentino region, a mountainous area with about 500,000 inhabitants, very close to Lombardy that was the epicenter of the pandemic in Italy, to avoid these dramatic consequences, we developed a new protocol tailored to our specificity to keep our institution, and above all the cath-lab, clean from the SARS-CoV-2 infection, to ensure full operativity for cardiologic emergencies.
Applying this protocol during the two months of the peak of the infection in Italy no one of the staff members of the cath-lab, the ICCU or the cardiology ward tested positive to nasal swab for SARS-CoV-2 and the same result was obtained for all the patients admitted to our units.
Our real-world experience shows that during the COVID-19 pandemic, quick activation of an appropriate protocol defining specific pathways for patients with a medical urgency is effective in minimizing healthcare personnel exposure and to preserve full operativity of the hub centers. This issue will be of a crucial importance, now that we are facing the second wave of the pandemic.
意大利北部是受新型严重急性呼吸系统综合症冠状病毒 2 号（SARS-CoV-2）影响最严重的地区之一。由于需要机械通气或重症监护的患者数量庞大，医疗系统已不堪重负，导致急性冠状动脉综合征（ACS）患者的治疗出现延误，这是由于 STEMI 网络崩溃和一些枢纽中心关闭，以及胸痛或等效心绞痛症状患者寻求医疗评估的时间延迟所致。
在特伦蒂诺地区，这是一个拥有约 50 万居民的山区，与意大利疫情中心伦巴第非常接近，为避免出现这些戏剧性的后果，我们制定了一项新的协议，根据我们的具体情况量身定制，以保持我们的机构，尤其是心导管实验室，免受 SARS-CoV-2 感染，确保心脏病急症的全面运作能力。
在意大利感染高峰期的两个月内，心导管实验室、重症监护室和心脏病病房的工作人员都没有通过鼻腔拭子检测出 SARS-CoV-2 呈阳性，而且我们收治的所有患者也都得到了相同的结果。
我们的实际经验表明，在 COVID-19 大流行期间，快速启动针对有医疗紧急情况的患者的适当协议，定义特定的途径，可有效减少医护人员的暴露，并保持枢纽中心的全面运作能力。现在我们正面临第二波疫情，这个问题将至关重要。
