A look at the global impact of COVID-19 pandemic on neurosurgical services and residency training

Kuo, Cathleen C.; Kassay, Andrea; Donnelly, Brianna M.; Bakr, Hebatalla; Aly, Mohamed; Ezzat, Ahmed; Soliman, Mohamed A.R.

doi:10.1016/j.sciaf.2022.e01504

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 81 publications

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“…Four-hundred and eighty-six neurosurgeons reported an average reduction of 79% in their neurosurgical praxis. In a systematic review and meta-analysis aiming to quantify the reduction in neurosurgical operative volume and describe the impact of these trends on neurosurgical residency training, Kuo et al [ 16 ], included 49 studies that met their inclusion criteria, published between December 2019 and October 2022, 12 of which were survey-based studies. The case volume of elective surgeries and non-elective procedures decreased by 70.4% and 68.2%, respectively, between pre-pandemic and pandemic periods.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Postoperative Neurosurgical Infections at a Reference Center in México

Soto Hernández,

González,

Ramírez

et al. 2023

Antibiotics

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The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major global impact on the treatment of hospitalized surgical patients. Our study retrospectively evaluates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at a neurosurgical reference center in Mexico City. We compared the number of neurosurgeries, the rate and type of postoperative infections, the causative microorganisms and in-hospital mortality rates in a 4-year period, from the pre-pandemic year 2019 until 2022. A total of 4150 neurosurgical procedures were registered. In 2020 the total number of surgeries was reduced by 36% compared to 2019 OR = 0.689 (95% CI 0.566–0.834) p ≤ 0.001, transnasal/trans sphenoidal pituitary resections decreased by 53%, and spinal surgeries by 52%. The rate of neurosurgical infections increased from 3.5% in 2019 to 5.6% in 2020 (p = 0.002). Regarding the microorganisms that caused infections, gram positive cocci accounted for 43.5% of isolates, Klebsiella spp. and Pseudomonas spp. caused one third of the infections. No significant differences were found for in-hospital mortality nor patterns of resistance to antibiotics. The number of surgeries increased in the last two years, although the infection rate has returned to pre-pandemic levels. We observed a lower impact from subsequent waves of COVID-19 and despite an increase in the number of surgeries, the surgeries have not amounted to the full pre-pandemic levels.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%