To defer or not to defer? A German longitudinal multicentric assessment of clinical practice in urology during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

After the outbreak of COVID-19 unprecedented changes in the healthcare systems worldwide were necessary resulting in a reduction of urological capacities with postponements of consultations and surgeries.

Material and methods

An email was sent to 66 urological hospitals with focus on robotic surgery (RS) including a link to a questionnaire (e.g. bed/staff capacity, surgical caseload, protection measures during RS) that covered three time points: a representative baseline week prior to COVID-19, the week of March 16th-22nd and April 20th-26th 2020. The results were evaluated using descriptive analyses.

Results

27 out of 66 questionnaires were analyzed (response rate: 41%). We found a decrease of 11% in hospital beds and 25% in OR capacity with equal reduct

SUBMITTER: Harke NN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7491711 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature