During the COVID-19 pandemic, a substantial decrease was observed in hospital admissions and in-hospital procedures for patients with acute cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). The extent to which measures to prevent COVID-19 transmission, for example, lockdowns, affected the outpatient care of patients at higher cardiovascular risk remains unclear. We aimed to compare outpatient department (OPD) attendance, cardiovascular risk management (CVRM) and cardiovascular health (CVH) of patients at higher cardiovascular risk referred to an OPD of a tertiary care centre between preCOVID-19, during and postCOVID-19 periods.

We included all adult patients at higher cardiovascular risk referred to the cardiology, vascular medicine, diabetology, geriatrics, nephrology or multidisciplinary vascular surgery OPDs of the University Medical Centre Utrecht, the Netherlands, between March 2019 and December 2022, in a prospective cohort study.

We assessed trends in the number of first and follow-up appointments and in the completeness of extractable CVRM indicators from the electronic health record (EHR) as a proxy for CVRM guideline adherence. CVH was determined using the Life’s Essential 8 metric (score 0–100, the higher score, the better). We investigated whether CVH differed between COVID-19 periods compared with the reference period (ie, 2019) and stratified by OPDs, using multivariable linear regression, adjusted for age, gender, CVD history and whether the patient had a previous appointment before the reference period.

Among 15 143 patients, we observed a 33% reduction in the weekly number of first appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the largest reductions in the cardiology and nephrology OPDs, with no differences between women and men. Follow-up appointments conducted remotely, compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic, increased significantly for all OPDs. CVRM indicators were up to 11% less extractable during the first lockdown yet returned to prepandemic levels directly after the first lockdown period. The CVH score of patients visiting the nephrology, vascular medicine and geriatrics OPDs during the first lockdown was 11.23 (95% CI 2.74 to 19.72), 5.68 (95% CI 0.82 to 10.54) and 5.66 (95% CI 0.01 to 11.31) points higher, respectively, compared with the prepandemic period. In between the second and third lockdowns, the CVH score was comparable to the preCOVID reference period, yet for the cardiology OPD it was significantly higher (5.54, 95% CI 2.04 to 9.05).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, weekly numbers of first appointments to OPDs decreased, and a population with a higher CVH score (ie, better CVH) visited certain OPDs, especially during the first lockdown period. These suggest that patients with poorer CVH more often avoided or were unable to visit OPDs, which might have resulted in missed opportunities to control cardiovascular risk factors and potentially may have led to preventable disease outcomes. For future epidemics and pandemics, it seems vital to develop a strategy that includes an emphasis on seeking healthcare when needed, with specific attention to patients at higher CVD risk.