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Surgery in the Time of COVID-19 Pandemic

NCT04684433 · Status: COMPLETED · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 707

Last updated 2021-03-16

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

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.

Conditions

  • Covid19

Interventions

OTHER

Data extraction from medical files

Data extraction from medical files

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Brugmann University Hospital

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Yasser Farid · CHU Brugmann

Eligibility

Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2020-04-14
Primary Completion
2021-03-15
Completion
2021-03-15

Countries

  • Belgium

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04684433 on ClinicalTrials.gov