While COVID-19 has claimed more than 13,000 lives in Michigan, many more likely died from cardiac arrest directly and indirectly attributable to the pandemic, researchers report.
A new study examined out-of-hospital cardiac arrest records in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties from March 23 through May 31, 2020. Researchers compared those records to data for the same period in 2019 and found that the number of cardiac arrests that occurred outside of hospitals soared to 1,854 during the early months of the pandemic, a 60% increase over the same period the year before.
Deaths from cardiac arrest also increased to 1,400 cases, a 42% jump from the previous year.
The increase in cardiac arrests and deaths due to cardiac arrests likely is attributable to several factors, both directly and indirectly related to COVID-19, says J. Adam Oostema, an associate professor of emergency medicine in the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and coauthor of the paper in
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests increased during the pandemic
While COVID-19 has claimed more than 13,000 lives in Michigan, a study conducted by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and Michigan State University published in JAMA Network Open, suggests that many more likely died from cardiac arrest directly and indirectly attributable to the pandemic.
The study examined out-of-hospital cardiac arrest records in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties from March 23 through May 31, 2020. The researchers compared those records to data for the same period in 2019 and found that the number of cardiac arrests that occurred outside of hospitals soared to 1,854 during the early months of the pandemic, a 60 percent increase over the same period the year before. Deaths from cardiac arrest also increased to 1,400 cases, a 42 percent jump from the previous year.