ArticleBMC emergency medicine2021
Variations in volume of emergency surgeries and emergency department access at a third level hospital in Milan, Lombardy, during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Article in BMC emergency medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Epidemiology of suicides attempt by self-poisoning: the Pavia Emergency-Toxicologic Network experience before and after the COVID-19 pandemic years.Internal and emergency medicine · 2026Observational
- Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on short-term postoperative outcomes for colorectal perforation: A nationwide study in Japan based on the National Clinical Database.Annals of gastroenterological surgery · 2024Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Elective and Emergency Surgeries, and Postoperative Mortality in a Brazilian Metropolitan Area: A Time-Series Cohort Study.Risk management and healthcare policy · 2024Article
- COVID-19 Pandemic Did not Influence Number of Oncologic and Emergency Surgeries: A Retrospective Cohort Study from a Tertiary Hospital in Austria.Annals of surgical oncology · 2023Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on provision and outcomes of emergency abdominal surgery in Irish public hospitals.Irish journal of medical science · 2022Article
- The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Surgical Activities: A Single-Center Experience and Literature Review.Cureus · 2022Article
- Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Emergency Department Volume and Acuity in Low Incidence Area: Taiwan's Experience in Three Hospitals.Journal of acute medicine · 2022Article
- Impact of COVID-19 in emergency medicine literature: a bibliometric analysis.Internal and emergency medicine · 2022Article
- Patients with Musculoskeletal Disorders Presenting to the Emergency Department: The COVID-19 Lesson.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Personality disorders (PD) and interpersonal violence (IV) during COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.Annals of general psychiatry · 2022Review
- Did the role of the neurologist in the emergency department change during the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from an Italian nationwide survey.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2022Article
- Examination of the relationship between emergency department presentations and population mortality: a multicenter analysis of emergency department presentations during the COVID-19 pandemic.European journal of internal medicine · 2021Article
- The association of the COVID-19 outbreak with in-hospital mortality: A single-centre study from Indonesia.Clinical epidemiology and global healthArticle
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Abstract
backgroundDuring the recent outbreak of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), Lombardy was the most affected region in Italy, with 87,000 patients and 15,876 deaths up to May 26, 2020. Since February 22, 2020, well before the Government declared a state of emergency, there was a huge reduction in the number of emergency surgeries performed at hospitals in Lombardy. A general decrease in attendance at emergency departments (EDs) was also observed. The aim of our study is to report the experience of the ED of a third-level hospital in downtown Milan, Lombardy, and provide possible explanations for the observed phenomena.
methodsThis retrospective, observational study assessed the volume of emergency surgeries and attendance at an ED during the course of the pandemic, i.e. immediately before, during and after a progressive community lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These data were compared with data from the same time periods in 2019. The results are presented as means, standard error (SE), and 95% studentized confidence intervals (CI). The Wilcoxon rank signed test at a 0.05 significance level was used to assess differences in per-day ED access distributions.
resultsCompared to 2019, a significant overall drop in emergency surgeries (60%, p < 0.002) and in ED admittance (66%, p ≅ 0) was observed in 2020. In particular, there were significant decreases in medical (40%), surgical (74%), specialist (ophthalmology, otolaryngology, traumatology, and urology) (92%), and psychiatric (60%) cases. ED admittance due to domestic violence (59%) and individuals who left the ED without being seen (76%) also decreased. Conversely, the number of deaths increased by 196%.
conclusionsDuring the COVID-19 outbreak the volume of urgent surgeries and patients accessing our ED dropped. Currently, it is not known if mortality of people who did not seek care increased during the pandemic. Further studies are needed to understand if such reductions during the COVID-19 pandemic will result in a rebound of patients left untreated or in unwanted consequences for population health.
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