The COVID-19 pandemic as experienced by adults with congenital heart disease from Belgium, Norway, and South Korea: impact on life domains, patient-reported outcomes, and experiences with care.
Philip Moons, Eva Goossens, Koen Luyckx and 6 others
PMID 34927192WHAT IT FOUND
Measured mental health, stigma, and care-experience scores changed negligibly before and during the pandemic in adults with congenital heart disease, despite many reporting negative impacts on social life, mental health, and work.
Ask each patient how they are coping.
Key findings
01Some pre-/peri-pandemic differences were statistically significant, but their effect sizes were all smaller than 0.2 and described as negligible; 73.2-86.1% of patients changed below the minimal clinically important difference threshold.
02Most patients reported negative pandemic impacts: 61.2% on overall life, 79.8% on social lives, 58.2% on mental health, and 50.9% on professional lives/education.
03No detected difference was found in pre-/peri-pandemic changes between patients with and without a COVID-19 diagnosis.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
18% of patients who completed the pre-pandemic assessment did not complete the peri-pandemic assessment, so attrition bias cannot be excluded. There was no healthy control group, so the observed changes cannot be directly compared with changes in people without congenital heart disease. Only one peri-pandemic assessment was made, so the study cannot project long-term effects. The study could not adjust for local regional pandemic conditions, so it cannot evaluate the impact of specific preventive measures. The pandemic impact survey was developed by the research team based on a WHO tool.
Declared interests
The supplied text includes a Funding and Conflicts of Interest heading but does not state the funder or author disclosures; the publication types list non-U.S. government research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read negligible patient-reported score changes as proof that adults with congenital heart disease were not distressed. The pandemic impact survey showed negative effects for many patients, and the authors state that significant distress and quality-of-life impairment were not rare at the individual level.