Study illustrates the profound impact of postponing cardiovascular surgeries due to COVID-19
In March 2020, when the pandemic hit, everything slowed, including non-essential medical procedures such as elective surgeries, to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
Six weeks later, Mary Byrnes, Ph.D., an assistant research scientist in the Department of Surgery at Michigan Medicine, began calling University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center patients whose surgeries had been canceled or delayed. She wanted to hear about their experiences -- what undergoing surgery meant to them, how postponing their operations had affected them, whether the existence of the coronavirus complicated how they felt about their bodies and about surgery.