Patient population and study design

The patients were recruited from the database of the CAUTION-COVID19 study (‘Mechanical complications of acute myocardial infarction: an international multicentre cohort study during COVID-19 pandemic among hospitalized patients’). The CAUTION-COVID19 study (trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov, {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT04813692","term_id":"NCT04813692"}}NCT04813692) is a retrospective, multicentre, observational trial aimed at evaluating the incidence, treatment and outcomes of post-AMI MCs during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic with respect to the 2 previous years. The herein reported study included all the adult patients (aged >18 years) who were hospitalized with a diagnosis of post-AMI MCs, independently of the treatment received (i.e. surgical, percutaneous or conservative), between 1 March 2018 and 28 February 2021 in 18 different centres from 6 European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands), as presented in Fig. 1. Patients have been identified through diagnosis-specific ICD-9 codes, administrative databases or surgical records.

Distribution of European centres enrolled in the study.

The study was conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki for patient data use and evaluation. A unified patient dataset was used to collect pertinent information, including demographic characteristics, clinical history, diagnostic workup, type of treatment and operative and postoperative data, as well as information on outcomes, from medical records. This report follows the STROBE reporting guidelines for observational studies.