Professor Barbara Casadei: COVID-19's Impact on Role of Cardiologists

Despite being weeks from peaking in certain areas in the US, the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has already plateaued in some parts of the world.

With the worst parts of the outbreak presumably behind them, clinicians in some of these areas can begin to step back and see what positive lessons can be taken from the pandemic.

During the outbreak, the role of many cardiologists has undergone changes they never could have expected to endure during their careers. New duties included immediately diverting research and spending extensive time in intensive care as well as aggregating and disseminating at a rate that had never been seen before.

Additionally, the onset of telehealth into cardiology that had once been slow and methodical has, for a period, become part of the norm. With lockdowns and stay-at-home orders causing the shutdown of many outpatient facilities, clinicians in all fields had to adapt and find ways to communicate with patients—setting the stage for telehealth to tout its true abilities.

From all of these necessary changes has come the realization of what is possible in cardiology, from the rapid formation of guidelines to providing optimal care through telehealth measures.

For more insight into how the role of cardiologists has changed and what lessons learned during the outbreak can be applied to future clinical practice, HCPLive® caught up with Professor Barbara Casadei, MD, President of the European Society of Cardiology and British Heart Foundation Associate professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford.