The Portuguese Society of Cerebral Vascular Accident says that stroke mortality was in decline in Portugal in recent years. However, in 2020, there was an increase of 4.2%, with 11,439 people dying, more than from covid-19.

The Portuguese Society of Cerebral Vascular Accidents said this Tuesday that the increase in deaths from stroke (Cerebral Vascular Accident) in the first year of the pandemic was due to the delay in seeking care, reorganization of services and diversion of means of care. primary health care.

“The biggest factor in this increase in deaths from stroke is the pandemic, our direct partnership. They gave us daily numbers of deaths from covid-19 and even warned that these numbers would be lower than deaths from stroke”, the vice president of the Portuguese Society of Cerebral Vascular Accidents (SPAVC) told Lusa.

João Sargento Freitas, a neurologist at the University of Coimbra Hospitals, comments on the 2020 mortality data revealed on Monday by the National Statistics Institute (INE), which indicate a 4.2% increase in deaths from medical vascular accidents, with a total of 11,439 deaths, more than by covid-19 (7,125), which was the second leading cause of death in Portugal.

According to INE, in 2020 diseases of the circulatory system were the ones that killed the most in Portugal, with 34,593 deaths (+2.9%). Of these, the INE showed the rise in deaths from stroke (11.39) and, on the other hand, the rise in deaths from ischemic heart disease (6,838) and acute myocardial infarction (4,086) stands out.

For the vice president of SPAVC, the negative impact of the pandemic – in the case of deaths from stroke – is multifactorial. “On the one hand, in the first wave, people resorted less to hospital emergencies, but there was also a shift of attention in health care to health for covid-19, leaving aside other diseases”, he explained.

“One can have the version considered as urgent, (…) as people were more reluctant and waited to see if there were re and delays in these diseases are a critical point. On the other hand, the onus is also on health care, as there was an organization at the hospital level and also a diversion of means in prevention, in primary health care.”

“Deviations for covid and health don’t work: do, how to control diabetes and other risk factors to your patients”, insists the specialist to family risks, “All options like options don’t have a price. “

Main cause of death in pandemic “wasn’t covid-19”

The specialist will also create the reorganization of intra-hospital services, with their own circuits for patients-19, taking into account the other circuits “suffered a bit”.

“There was a big effort in the stroke units so that the covid was as little as possible, but I know that there are centers that had great difficulties and others in which the stroke units were transformed into units for patients for covid”, he said.

These numbers, he underlined, “do not remind us of an idea that we cannot remember diseases because the main cause of death was covid”.

João Sargento Freitas also said that the relevant data from the INE “a little discouraging”. “In Portugal, in recent years, mortality from stroke was decreasing and we saw content with that.”

“Prevenir and treatments had to improve techniques, each time the best weapons were developed, but there were also many problems for these weapons to be developed”, explained the SPAVC vice president, respecting, however, that the values ​​now revealed “ they have to be series and consistent, down to the last detail”.