The impact of an early strict nationwide lockdown on the pattern of consultation for neurological diseases

Abstract

A massive disruption of healthcare systems, a profound economic depressionand a distressing social situation [1]. Most countries enteredinto a lockdown in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus once theywere already suffering a serious hit. Based on the experience observed in Europe, Argentina closed its borders on March 15thonly one week afterthe firstperson died of COVID-19, and implemented an early nationwidelockdown limiting the circulation of 90% of its population, on March20th, with 128 cases and 3 deaths of COVID-19 [2-3]. Most health careresources were reassigned in anticipation of a catastrophic situation. Themassive communication media and the medical community warned thepopulation about the necessity of avoiding ?non-urgent? consults to theemergency rooms to avoid the overload of the system.To evaluate the impact of the national lockdown policy during theCOVID-19 pandemic,we compared the pattern of consultation to a tertiaryneurological center.Patients who attended to our ED have primaryneurological complaints or presented chronic neurological conditionswith varied medical problems. The period evaluated was the quarantineperiod (March 20st to April 26th 2020) with the same timeframeof 2019.Descriptive summaries are presented as mean or median (standarddeviation, SD) for continuous variables and proportions for categoricalvariables. The t-test or Mann-Whitney test were used to comparequantitative variables as appropriate. Pearson Chi-Square test or Fisher´sexact test were used to comparefrequencies of categorical variables asappropriate.A p-value < 0.05 was considered significant. The statisticalanalysis was performed with R-3.6.1, and the tydiverse, ggpubr, andggplot2 packages. This research has been approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee.