The following is a summary of “Emergencies do not shut down during a pandemic: COVID pandemic impact on Acute Care Surgery volume and mortality at a level I trauma center,” published in the December 2022 issue of Surgery by Ross, et al.
The hypothesis was that inpatient mortality would rise due to COVID+ and resource limitations. For a study, researchers sought to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the volume and outcomes of Acute Care Surgery patients.
The trauma and operational emergency general surgery (EGS) registries of an American College of Surgeons recognized Level I Trauma Center were searched for all patients from January 2019 to December 2020. The line between the pre and post-COVID pandemic periods was set on April 1st, 2020. Patient death was the main result.
About 30,911 EGS patients and 14,460 trauma pas both had similar month-over-month volumes (P > 0.05). However, with a concurrent 25% increase in first surgical care, blunt trauma dropped by 7.4%, and penetrating trauma rose by 31% (P< 0.001). Despite this, multivariate analysis revealed that the mortality rates for trauma (3.7%) and EGS (2.9–3.0%; P > 0.05) were unchanged. In patients with trauma and EGS, COVID + mortality was 8.8% and 3.7%, respectively.
Despite several challenges and resource limitations, acute care surgeons delivered trauma and EGS patients high-quality treatment during the pandemic without permitting excess death.
Reference: americanjournalofsurgery.com/article/S0002-9610(22)00661-4/fulltext
