All cardiac surgery units in the UK and Ireland have been forced to significantly diverge from normal practice during the current Covid-19 outbreak. In the Belfast Trust, we are attempting to maintain an emergency service for patients with immediately life threatening cardiac disease that may be helped by surgery. We are also trying to perform cardiac surgery on patients who are unable to leave the hospital due to the severity of their cardiac conditions. The clinical details of all such patients have been reviewed by a large group of senior heart specialists and some have had their management plans altered in view of the risk of being made more susceptible to serious Covid-19 infection post-operatively. The advice from our professional bodies is to manage patients without surgery wherever possible to minimise their ICU and hospital stay. For example, this means that some patients who might normally have been advised to have cardiac surgery such as CABG (bypass grafts) are now being advised to have PCI (stents). All but the most urgent out-patient attendances have been cancelled and patients are being assessed by a telephone call from a doctor.
We fully understand the anxieties this outbreak has caused to cardiac patients and strongly advise that all patients practice strict social distancing.
Good advice on Covid for patients with heart disease can be found on the British Heart Foundation website here https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/coronavirus-and-your-health