Surgical volume reduction and the announcement of triage during the 1st wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan: a cohort study using an interrupted time series analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has caused unprecedented challenges for surgical staffs to minimize exposure to COVID-19 or save medical resources without harmful patient outcomes, in accordance with the statement of each surgical society. No research has empirically validated declines in surgical volume in Japan, based on the usage of surgical triage. We aimed to identify whether the announcement of surgical priorities by each Japanese surgical society may have affected the surgical volume decline during the 1st wave of this pandemic.

Methods

We extracted 490,719 available cases of patients aged > 15 years who underwent elective major surgeries between July 1, 2018, and June 30, 2020. After the categorization of surgical specialities, we calculated descr

SUBMITTER: Okuno T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8059122 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature