COVID-19: how the pandemic impacted the emergency department and urgent surgical activity in a medium-size Italian hospital

  1. Enrico Pinotti
  2. Francesca Carissimi
  3. Gianluca Baronio
  4. Mauro Montuori
  5. Deborah Ongaro
  6. Michele Ciocca Vasino

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Abstract

Backgrounds

COVID-19 has grown rapidly in Lombardy, particularly in the province of Bergamo. To deal with the pressure the pandemic has exerted on the Italian health system; many hospitals have had to reorganize their medical and surgical activities. The aim of this study was to evaluate how the pandemic influenced the emergency department and urgent surgical activity in a medium-size hospital in the province of Bergamo.

Methods

In this retrospective observational study, we analyzed the number of admissions to the medical and surgical Emergency Room and their severity compared with those in the same period in previous years (2011-2019). Admission in the medical and surgical department and urgent surgical operation was also assessed.

Results

From March 7th to April 5th, 2020, we observe a reduction in emergency department access (−53%) when compared with the corresponding period of previous years. The number of medical admissions was similar to the past years (+0.9%), we observed a drastic reduction of surgical patients (−82.5%). We experienced a significant increase in hospitalizations in the medical department (+359%) and a reduction of admission in the surgical department (−71.2%).

Conclusion

SARS-CoV2 disease has spread so suddenly and severely that it has stressed Italian health system, in particular the Lombard one. Our data show the rise of critical medical ER accesses and the significant expansion in hospitalisation in the medical department with the necessary hospital reorganisation to face COVID-19 emergency. We also observed a reduction in both surgical ER accesses and urgent surgical activity.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.19.20234856: (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

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS software (Statistical Package for Social Science).
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    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

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.19.20234856v1 on medRxiv