Surgery in the Time of COVID-19 Pandemic

CHU Brugmann University Hospital

Status: Completed

Conditions: Covid19

Treatments: Other: Data extraction from medical files

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04684433

CHUB-Farid

Details and patient eligibility

About

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which started in China, was declared on the 11th of March as a global pandemic 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Governments around the world have introduced differing forms of lock downs since the start of the pandemic demanding citizens to confine to their homes and go out only in necessity to minimize exposure to the virus. The response was observed in the emergency departments and the number of patients who presented for non-Covid issues drastically reduced.

Hospitals activated their mass casualty management plans and have reorganized and overstretched their capacity to be able to absorb both the influx of patients with the virus and those with other conditions.

Part of that reorganization was reducing the surgical activity. The main focus was shifted to patients who are considered urgent and elective surgery were postponed. Hence only surgical emergencies were maintained. Many did not present to the emergency department for fear to contract the virus and from a sense of national and global solidarity against that pandemic.

Whereas these measures are essential to prevent the spread of the virus, it may be hypothesized that for non-Covid issues, including surgical emergencies, patients may present late to the emergency department due to fear of contracting the infection in hospital. This would delay their management and lead to a worsened symptomology on presentation requiring a more complex surgical intervention with an increased complication profile.

The investigators present initial data from four major hospitals in Belgium, characterizing surgical emergencies that were managed since the start of the pandemic and discuss the repercussion the pandemic has on management of urgent surgical patients and most likely evolution of surgery after the pandemic.

Enrollment: 707 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Patients who had a surgical procedure since the start of the lock down in Belgium due to the COVID19 pandemic (16 of March 2020 to the 12 of April 2020).

Exclusion criteria

None

Trial design

707 participants in 1 patient group

Surgical intervention

Description:

Patients who had a surgical procedure since the start of the lockdown in Belgium due to the COVID19 pandemic (16 of March 2020 to the 12 of April 2020.

Treatment:

Other: Data extraction from medical files