ArticleInternational journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care2024
The impact of elective surgery postponement during COVID-19 on emergency bellwether procedures in a large tertiary centre in Singapore.
Article in International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Defining the bellwether procedures and processes for global trauma care: an international Delphi study.BMJ global health · 2026Article
- Prevalence, Outcomes and Healthcare Costs of Postoperative ARDS Compared with Medical ARDS.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Addressing the emerging threat of Oropouche virus: implications and public health responses for healthcare systems.Tropical diseases, travel medicine and vaccines · 2025Review
- Gender-Specific Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Orthopedic and Traumatology Care: An Analysis of Hospital Admissions and Length of Stay.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on primary brain tumor incidence and management: Decisions that went right.Neuro-oncology advancesArticle
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Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic drove many healthcare systems worldwide to postpone elective surgery to increase healthcare capacity, manpower, and reduce infection risk to staff. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of an elective surgery postponement policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on surgical volumes and patient outcomes for three emergency bellwether procedures. A retrospective cohort study of patients who underwent any of the three emergency procedures [Caesarean section (CS), emergency laparotomy (EL), and open fracture (OF) fixation] between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2021 was conducted using clinical and surgical data from electronic medical records. The volumes and outcomes of each surgery were compared across four time periods: pre-COVID (January 2018-January 2020), elective postponement (February-May 2020), recovery (June-November 2020), and postrecovery (December 2020-December 2021) using Kruskal-Wallis test and segmented negative binomial regression. There was a total of 3886, 1396, and 299 EL, CS, and OF, respectively. There was no change in weekly volumes of CS and OF fixations across the four time periods. However, the volume of EL increased by 47% [95% confidence interval: 26-71%, P = 9.13 × 10-7) and 52% (95% confidence interval: 25-85%, P = 3.80 × 10-5) in the recovery and postrecovery period, respectively. Outcomes did not worsen throughout the four time periods for all three procedures and some actually improved for EL from elective postponement onwards. Elective surgery postponement in the early COVID-19 pandemic did not affect volumes of emergency CS and OF fixations but led to an increase in volume for EL after the postponement without any worsening of outcomes.
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