Observational studyEmergency radiology2021
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the activity of the Radiological Emergency Department: the experience of the Maggiore della Carità Hospital in Novara.
Observational study in Emergency radiology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trends in CT examination utilization in the emergency department during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC medical imaging · 2024Article
- Acute care pathway assessed through performance indicators during the COVID-19 pandemic in OECD countries (2020-2021): a scoping review.BMC emergency medicine · 2024Article
- The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of diagnostic imaging examinations in the Brazilian unified healthcare system (SUS).Health policy and technology · 2023Article
- Trends in outpatient shoulder arthroplasty during the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) era: increased proportion of outpatient cases with decrease in 90-day readmissions.Journal of shoulder and elbow surgery · 2022Article
- Impact of Insurance Benefits and Education on Point-of-Care Ultrasound Use in a Single Emergency Department: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeDuring the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the activity of Emergency Departments worldwide changed dramatically, focusing on diagnosis and care of the Sars-Cov-2 associated disease. These major changes also involved the activity of the Emergency Radiology Department (ERD). This study aimed to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on imaging studies, both in terms of the amount, frequency and subspecialty of different imaging modalities requested to the ERD of the Maggiore della Carità Hospital in Novara (Italy).
methodsTo this end, our observational study took into account the imaging studies requested by the emergency department during three-time spans. These were defined as phase 0 (pre-pandemic), phase 1 (pandemic peak with complete lockdown) and phase 2 (post-pandemic peak with partial lifting of restrictive measures), as derived from Italian urgent decrees by the President of the Council of Ministers (DPCM) which established the duration and entity of the lockdown measures throughout the pandemic. The dataset was processed and then compared with Pearson's chi-squared test.
resultsDuring the pandemic peak, our data showed a significant drop in the total number of studies requested and a significant rise in computed tomography (CT) studies. In particular, a statistically significant increase in chest CT studies was found, probably due to the high sensitivity of this imaging method in identifying pulmonary involvement during respiratory tract infection of possible viral etiology (SARS-Cov-2). Moreover, we observed a statistically significant decrease of X-ray (XR) and ultrasound (US) studies during phase 1 compared to phase 0 and phase 2 probably due to a reduction in the numbers of ER visits for minor traumas given the mobility restrictions and people hesitancy in visiting the ER due to fear of contagion.
conclusionsWe can conclude that the activity of the ERD was heavily impacted by the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic. Further studies will be needed to estimate the impact of the pandemic on public health in terms of excess mortality related to delayed diagnosis and care of non-COVID diseases.
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