The impact of COVID-19 and social avoidance in urgent and emergency surgeries - will a delay in diagnosis result in perioperative complications?

Objective: The sudden COVID-19 outbreak has changed our health system. Physicians had to face the challenge of treating a large number of critically ill patients with a new disease and also maintain the essential healthcare services functioning properly. To prevent disease dissemination, authorities instructed people to stay at home and seek medical care only if they experienced respiratory distress. However, there are concerns those patients did not seek necessary health care because of these orientations. This study aims to see how the pandemic has influenced the severity of the disease, complication, and mortality of patients undergoing emergency cholecystectomy and appendectomy.

Methods: Retrospective review of medical records of patients admitted to the emergency department and undergoing to cholecystectomy and appendicectomy in the periods from March to May 2019 and 2020.

Results: We observed that COVID-19 did not change the severity of presentation or the outcome of patients with gallbladder disease, but caused a 24.2% increase in the prevalence of complicated appendicitis (p<0.05). However, disagreeing with what was expected, we did not identify a greater number of perioperative complications in patients undergoing an appendectomy.

Conclusion: Therefore, it seems that in a university tertiary referral center COVID-19 did not influence the management and outcome of inflammatory diseases treated in the surgical emergency department.