Delayed referrals for two symptomatic patients because of COVID-19 fears led to irreversible bilateral vision loss from giant cell arteritis (GCA), Italian rheumatologists have reported.

The researchers studied patients referred to the University of Pavia’s fast-track clinic, which handles urgent assessments of patients with suspected GCA. They compared the period since the Italian COVID-19 outbreak (21 February-30 April 2020) with the corresponding period in 2019.

As reported in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, a 75% reduction in requests for fast-track assessments occurred during the outbreak (16 requests in 2019 vs four in 2020).

Further, symptom duration prior to diagnosis was a median of eight days in 2019 compared with 31 days in 2020.