A multi-centre prospective study of COVID-19 transmission following outpatient Gastrointestinal Endoscopy in the United Kingdom

  1. Bu’Hussain Hayee
  2. The SCOTS project group
  3. James E. East
  4. Colin Rees
  5. Ian Penman

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely curtailed the practice of endoscopy (as an exemplar for outpatient diagnostic procedures) worldwide. Restart and recovery processes will be influenced by the need to protect patients and staff from disease transmission, but data on the risk of COVID-19 transmission after endoscopy are sparse. This is of particular importance in later pandemic phases when the risk of harm from delayed or missed significant diagnoses is likely to far outweigh the risk of infection. The British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) guidance for restarting endoscopy included stratification of diagnostic procedures according to aerosol generation or assessment of infectious risk as well as pragmatic guidance on the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). We sought to document the risk of COVID-19 transmission after endoscopy in this “COVID-minimised” environment. Prospective data were collected from 18 UK centres for n=6208 procedures. Pre-endoscopy, 3/2611 (0.11% [95% CI: 0.00-0.33%]) asymptomatic patients tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on nasopharyngeal swab. Based on follow-up telephone symptom screening of patients at 7 and 14 days, no cases of COVID-19 were detected by any centre after endoscopy in either patients or staff. While these data cannot determine the relative contribution of each component of a COVID-minimised pathway, they provide clear support for such an approach. The rational use of PPE and infection control policies should be continued and will aid planning for outpatient diagnostics in the COVID-19 recovery phase.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.02.20166736: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.08.02.20166736v2 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.08.02.20166736v1 on medRxiv