The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Surgical Activities: A Single-Center Experience and Literature Review

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate the effect of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on our surgical department, which is situated in Athens, Greece, as well as to review published literature on the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on surgical activities in our department. Material and methodsWe retrospectively reviewed the surgical procedures that were performed in the surgical department of a tertiary University hospital in Athens, Greece, before and during the pandemic. Furthermore, we performed a literature review evaluating articles on surgical activity and COVID-19 published from the beginning of the pandemic up until the January of 2022 on the PubMed database. ResultsIn total, 894 patients were included in the study. Of those, 264 (29.5%) underwent surgery during the control period and 630 (70.5%) in the pandemic period. Overall, we performed 20.5% fewer surgeries in the postsanitary period. In particular, elective surgeries decreased on average by 23.9%, emergency procedures decreased by 8.9%, and oncology surgeries increased by an average of 6.4% after the year 2020. Concerning the review of literature, 51 studies were selected for this review. According to them, the main effect of the pandemic on the surgical sector was reflected in the reduction of total surgeries, mainly due to the postponement of elective surgical procedures, which showed a median reduction of 54% compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. A smaller decrease was observed in the number of emergency and oncological surgeries. ConclusionsReduced surgical activity during the pandemic, due to the health measures imposed, requires courageous corrective interventions to avoid its adverse effects, such as disease progression, increased treatment costs, reduced quality of life, and ultimately the survival of the patients.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on bone and soft tissue tumor treatment: A single-institution study

“…In this study, the number of inpatient and outpatient surgeries showed a downward trend compared to the numbers in the pre-COVID-19 era, but the number of surgeries for malignant bone and soft tissue tumors for inpatients remained the same compared to the number the previous year. Several reports have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to a decrease in the number of surgeries for various carcinomas [ 18 , 20 , 21 ]; conversely, other studies have reported that the number of tumor surgeries has increased [ 22 ], and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on surgery is controversial. In our hospital, surgeries for malignant bone and soft tissue tumors were actively performed.…”