key: cord-0691329-pocspwlo
authors: Ferrari, Paola; Malanchini, Giovanni; Malacrida, Maurizio; Senni, Michele; De Filippo, Paolo
title: Experience of a pediatric electrophysiology clinic during the COVID‐19 pandemic
date: 2022-03-11
journal: J Arrhythm
DOI: 10.1002/joa3.12693
sha: 982ecc4094649e16dbc449ca61312543d7088fd3
doc_id: 691329
cord_uid: pocspwlo

nan

To the Editor Providing high-quality clinical care is crucial during the current coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, it is especially true for pediatric patients. The main reasons for hospital admission or medical contact in the selected population of pediatric cardiac electrophysiology (EP) patients are interventional procedures (both device implantation and electrophysiological study and ablation), device follow-up, and ambulatory consultations. The growing number of cases of COVID-19 and the need to reduce the viral spread, led to substantial changes in providing care to patients with any kind of cardiac disease, as reported in previous issues of this Journal. [1] [2] [3] Here, we report the transformations in the care of pediatric EP patients during the pandemic at ASST Papa Giovanni XXIII, Bergamo, one of the areas most affected by COVID-19 in Italy. The pediatric electrophysiology clinic has several activities that were routinely performed in-person: they ranged from medication dispensation of calls were about confirmed or possible COVID-19 symptoms and subsequent medical consultations with patients with a history of the arrhythmic disease. In the first period of the pandemic, thanks to the numerous changes implemented patients' outcomes did not seem to be affected: We did not observe any adverse event in our chronic patients, although it is difficult to say whether incident cases may have received less efficient or timely care.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5044-0069Maurizio Malacrida https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8823-0334