The Untold Toll — The Pandemic’s Effects on Patients without Covid-19 , Lisa Rosenbaum, M.D.
In late March, Zoran Lasic, an interventional cardiologist at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center and Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, was finishing afternoon clinic when he was approached by a nurse colleague seeking his advice. Her husband — a 56-year-old whose father died of sudden cardiac arrest at 55 — had been feeling chest pressure. The pressure radiated down his arms and occasionally to his neck and, the previous day, had been accompanied by dyspnea and diaphoresis, making him worried enough to call an ambulance. The emergency medical technicians did an electrocardiogram, said it looked OK, and told him to call his primary care doctor. He did, and he was advised that given New York’s Covid-19 outbreak, it was not a good time to go to the hospital. Now, a day later, his colleague asked Lasic, what should they do?