Surgery postponements in a public hospital before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A case study

OBJECTIVE Tau omicron record all the planned surgeries of the pre-pandemic period 2018-2019 and to compare in number with the pandemic years. The study also assessed the impact of the pandemic associated with the general reduction and cancellation of the last 24 hour scheduled surgeries in a secondary public hospital and examined the factors behind the postponements and to what extent they have been affected by the pandemic. Mu ETHOD This research was carried out in a General Hospital of Thessaloniki through the utilization of data from the daily programs of the surgery theaters for the years 2018-2022. RESULTS Survey data showed that 17,790 surgeries were performed over the four years (2018-2020) of our study. In the two pandemic years 2020-2021, surgical operations (7,686 operations) had a 23.9% decrease compared to the two previous pre-pandemic years (2018-2019), in which 10,104 operations were performed. The number of postponements in the pre-pandemic years was 437 while in the pandemic it was 186 (routine-emergency) scheduled surgeries, which is a statistically significant reduction of 57.2%.The main reasons for the results were the pandemic that forced the restructuring of the wards and the creation of COVID-19 wards, but mainly the periodic suspensions of surgeries. CONCLUSIONS Health systems allowed the maximum care for patients with COVID-19, mainly through recourse relocation, by reducing surgeries with major impact on the lack of care for patients with other health problems.