Surgical Procedure Volumes Dropped During COVID-19 Peak – Consumer Health News

THURSDAY, Aug. 18, 2022 (HealthDay News) — There was a considerable lower in surgical process volumes in the course of the COVID-19 peak, and volumes recovered partially in the course of the post-COVID-19-peak interval, based on a research printed on-line Aug. 18 in JAMA Network Open.

Soham Ghoshal, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues quantified adjustments within the quantity of surgical procedures at an instructional quaternary care heart from Jan. 6, 2019, to Dec. 31, 2021. A complete of 129,596 surgical procedures had been retrospectively analyzed throughout 4 durations: pre-COVID-19 (Jan. 6, 2019, to Jan. 4, 2020), COVID-19 peak (March 15, 2020, to May 2, 2020), post-COVID-19 peak (May 3, 2020, to Jan. 2, 2021), and postvaccine launch (Jan. 3, 2021, to Dec. 31, 2021).

The researchers discovered that the general weekly surgical process volumes decreased 44.6 % in the course of the COVID-19 peak from pre-COVID-19 ranges (imply procedures per week, 406.00 versus 732.37). This lower occurred throughout all surgical subspecialties. Overall weekly surgical volumes recovered to 85.8 % of pre-COVID-19-peak volumes in the course of the post-COVID-19-peak interval (imply procedures per week, 624.31). Across subspecialties and case lessons, this restoration was inconsistent. Some subspecialties skilled restoration to pre-COVID-19 volumes in the course of the postvaccine launch interval, however others continued to expertise decreases.

“Future research ought to purpose to quantify the longer-time period associations of the pandemic with surgical care by inspecting the influence of the delta and the omicron variants into 2022 and past,” the authors write.

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