IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON SURGICAL PROCEDURES IN BRAZIL: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY

  1. Bárbara Okabaiasse Luizeti
  2. Victor Augusto Santos Perli
  3. Gabriel Gonçalves da Costa
  4. Igor da Conceição Eckert
  5. Aluisio Marino Roma
  6. Karina Miura da Costa

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Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected medical practice, and conducts o minimize the overload of healthcare services were necessary. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the pandemic in the practice of surgical procedures in Brazil. This is a descriptive study with data about hospitalizations for surgical procedures in Brazil from 2016 to 2020, collected from the Department of Informatics of Brazil’s Unified Health System (DATASUS). Primary analysis describes the variations in the number of elective, urgent and other types of surgical procedures performed during this period, by comparing the mean number of hospitalizations from 2016 to 2019 with the absolute number from 2020. Secondary analysis describe the variations in hospitalizations for surgical procedures during this period in each of Brazil’s geographical regions, and variations in different surgical procedure subgroups. There was a decrease of 14.88% [95% CI: 14,82-14,93] in hospitalizations for surgical procedures in 2020, when comparing to the mean between 2016-2019. Decrease rates were 34.82% [95% CI: 34,73-34,90] for elective procedures and 1.11% [95% CI: 1.07-1.13] for urgent procedures. Surgical procedure subgroups with highest decrease rates were endocrine gland surgery, breast surgery, oral-maxillofacial surgery and surgery of upper airways, face, head and neck. The overload of healthcare facilities demanded reductions in non-urgent activities to prevent services’ collapse. Further studies are needed to evaluate the social and clinical impact of such reductions and support the development of precise criteria defining which procedures should be prioritized.

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  1. Version published to 10.17765/2176-9192.2021v23n2e10408
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.17.21253801: (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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    This study has limitations: the data refer only to the Brazilian public health system because data from the private health system are not available, which might lead to an overestimation of the decrease rates. As secondary data, the veracity of the information provided depends on proper registration. Although regression analyses that could help explain the differences in the number of surgeries between subgroups and regions were not performed, some justifications for the temporal trends of reduction in surgical procedures are speculated, such as the correlation with decrees and laws of state and municipal governments that imposed the postponement of elective surgeries.

    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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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.03.17.21253801v1 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.21203/rs.3.rs-337266/v1 on Research Square