Emergency surgery in the time of Coronavirus: the pandemic effect.

Background: The COVID-19 epidemic became a challenge for Emergency Departments (ED) and a remarkable reduction in surgical emergencies has been widely noticed. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of the pandemic period in the need of surgical emergencies.

Methods: Between January 1, and May 31, 2020 all the consecutive general surgery emergencies performed by the Unit Hospital Emergency Surgery of the Careggi University (Florence, Italy) were prospectively recorded and compared to the same period of 2019.