The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Patients delay ER trips over concerns about the pandemic
A few weeks ago a patient of one of Dr. Andrew Waxler’s colleagues died of a heart attack in a hospital emergency room.
His colleague, Waxler said, insists it didn’t have to happen.
“He had symptoms for a week and waited until 1 a.m., until he couldn’t breath,” Waxler said. “He was on death’s doorstep.”
The patient, like far too many others, hadn’t wanted to go to the emergency room, Waxler said. Inundated by warnings about the deadly COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the world, he considered it too risky.
“There have been cases like this all over the state, all over the country, all over the world,” said Waxler of Wyomissing. “People are making the decision to not come in. And that’s actually COVID causing the indirect effect of both harm and also death that should not have happened.
“It’s not that the patients don’t know any better, they’re sort of overwhelmed with fear over this virus.”
Waxler — who is a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Penn State College of Medicine, president of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American College of Cardiology and governor of the American College of Cardiology representing eastern Pennsylvania — said there have been countless stories about heart attack and stroke victims getting help too late after delaying trips to the emergency room because of COVID-19 fears.
The trend first started becoming obvious about five or six weeks ago, Waxler said, with hospitals reporting much lower than normal numbers of heart attack and stroke patients coming to emergency rooms.
“At first that seemed like a good thing, but then we started noticing there were more people coming into the hospital late,” he said. “They would say they had tightness in the chest for three days, and we’d say, ‘Why didn’t you come in?’ they’d say, ‘Oh, heck, I’m not coming in to the hospital, I don’t want to catch that terrible virus.’”