Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on emergency department visits: experience of a Brazilian reference center.

Objective: To analyze the impact of COVID-19 on emergency department metrics at a large tertiary reference hospital in Brazil.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of consecutive emergency department visits, from January 1, 2020, to November 21, 2020, was performed and compared to the corresponding time frame in 2018 and 2019. The volume of visits and patients' demographic and clinic characteristics were compared.

Left atrial dysfunction in chagas cardiomyopathy is more severe than in idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy: a study with real-time three-dimensional echocardiography.

Background: Although there is anatomopathologic evidence of atrial involvement in Chagas cardiomyopathy (CCM), the impact in left atrial (LA) function is unknown. The aim of this study was to evaluate LA function in patients with CCM with real-time three-dimensional echocardiography (RT3DE) and to compare it with patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM).

Methods: A total of 30 patients with CCM, 30 patients with DCM, and 20 normal subjects used as the control group were studied.