Jersey Shore University Medical Center Contributes to Study Tracking Clinical Trends in STEMI Patients with COVID-19

Study Charts Changes in Clinical Characteristics, Management and Outcomes Over the Course of the Pandemic

After previously reporting high in-hospital mortality for STEMI patients with COVID-19 treated in the early phase of the pandemic, a research team including Jersey Shore University Medical Center clinical staff took a look at shifting case trends two years into the pandemic.

North American COVID-19 STEMI (NACMI) researchers, including Jersey Shore University Medical Center Interventional cardiologist Aditya Mehra, M.D., FACC, FSCAI, published their findings in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and presented at the late breaking clinical trial session at ACC.22. They compared trends in clinical characteristics, management and outcomes of patients treated in the first year of the pandemic (January to December 2020) with those treated in the second year (January to December 2021), referencing the NACMI registry, a multi-center, observational registry of hospitalized STEMI patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infection in North America.

The analysis included 586 COVID-positive patients with STEMI, 227 treated in 2020 and 359 treated in 2021, and documented significant changes in the clinical characteristics and outcomes of STEMI patients with COVID-19 infection during the course of the pandemic.

Relative to 2020, the proportion of Caucasian patients was higher, and patients presented more frequently with typical ischemic symptoms and were less likely to have shock pre-PCI or pulmonary manifestations in 2021. In-hospital mortality decreased from 33% in 2020 to 23% in 2021. In 2021, none of the 22 vaccinated patients died in the hospital, while there were 37 in-hospital deaths in the unvaccinated patient group.

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