Differential impact of COVID-19 on urological surgeries in public and private institutions between 2019 and 2021 in France.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted all routine health care services in 2020. To date, data regarding adjustment and coverage of surgical backlog in the post-COVID era actually remains scarce. The aim of this study was to compare the number of urological procedures coded between 2019 and 2021 in public and private institutions to (i) quantify the variation in surgical activity linked to the shutdown in 2020 and (ii) study the adjustment of procedures over the year 2021.

Materials And Methods: This is a comprehensive retrospective analysis of all urological surgeries coded between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2021 in France. Data were extracted from the open access dataset of the national Technical Agency for Information on Hospital Care (ATIH) website. In total, 453 urological procedures were retained and allocated in 8 categories. Primary outcome was the impact of COVID-19 analyzed by the 2020/2019 variation. The secondary outcome was the post-COVID catch-up analyzed by the 2021/2019 variation.

Results: Surgical activity in public hospitals dropped by 13.2% in 2020 compared to 7.6% in the private sector. The most impacted areas were functional urology, stones and BPH. Incontinence surgery did not recover at all in 2021. BPH and stone surgeries were far less impacted in the private sector, with even explosive activity in 2021, post-COVID period. Onco-urology procedures were roughly maintained with a compensation in 2021 in both sectors.

Conclusion: The recovery of surgical backlog was much more efficient in the private sector in 2021. The pressure on the health system associated to the multiple COVID-19 waves may generate a gap between public and private surgical activity in the future.