Abstract
Background: A new coronavirus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 spread rapidly in late 2019 and caused a worldwide pandemic. Due to the pandemic, people are hesitant to go to the hospital and they move much less compared to normal life, which has caused new health problems to emerge.
Aims: This study aimed to examine the demographic characteristics of patients who admitted to the emergency department due to thromboembolic events before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in our country, and to investigate the effect of the pandemic on thromboembolic events. As a result, it was aimed to determine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on thromboembolic events and hospital admissions.
Methods: Patients with a thromboembolic event detected between July 01,2019-December 31, 2019 were classified as Group I, and patients with a thromboembolic event detected between July 01,2019- December 31, 2020 were classified as Group II. A total of 859 patients over the age of 18, who had no previous comorbidities, not pregnant, and were hospitalized and treated due to thromboembolic events were included in the study. 447 of these patients were in group I and 412 were in group II. Only 20 (4.9%) of the patients in Group II had a history of previous Covid 19 infection.
Results: It was observed that there was no significant difference in the comparison of the number of cases of thromboembolic events seen in Group I and Group II (p = 0.536). When looking at the distribution of diseases by month, a significant difference was detected in 2019 (mostly in October)(p=0.006,Chi Square: 59.844), while there was no significant difference in Group II (p=0.503,Chi square:34.263).
Conclusion: From the period after the beginning of the pandemic, we saw that the rate of hospitalization due to thromboembolic event was 4% less than in the same period of the previous year. We think that this may be due to fewer hospital admissions due to the risk of disease transmission during the pandemic period, or the fact that Covid 19 infection does not significantly increase the susceptibility to thrombosis.