Letter to the Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Surg. Jun 27, 2022; 14(6): 626-628
Published online Jun 27, 2022. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v14.i6.626
Important role of acute care surgery during pandemic time
Ming Yang, Chun-Ye Zhang
Ming Yang, Department of Surgery, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, United States
Chun-Ye Zhang, Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65201, United States
Author contributions: Yang M and Zhang CY collected data, wrote, finalized the letter, and contributed equally.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ming Yang, DVM, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Surgery, University of Missouri, 1030 Hitt Street, NextGen Precision Health Building, Room 2203, Columbia, MO 65211, United States. yangmin@health.missouri.edu
Received: August 29, 2021
Peer-review started: August 29, 2021
First decision: November 17, 2021
Revised: November 21, 2021
Accepted: May 27, 2022
Article in press: May 27, 2022
Published online: June 27, 2022
Processing time: 301 Days and 17.6 Hours
Abstract

Pandemic impacts acute care surgery for diseases, such as gallbladder disease and acute appendicitis. At the early stage of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the case number of patients needing surgery decreased in hospitals from different countries. This decline was associated with the stay-home order and fear of getting COVID-19 infection. However, recent reports show that the case number for acute surgery returns to the normal level, which is comparable to that before the beginning of the pandemic. In addition, a variety of diseases show more severe than the cases before the pandemic, which might be caused by factors such as lack of regular follow-up and screening diagnosis and infection of viruses.

Keywords: Pandemic impact; Acute care surgery; Outcome; Disease pattern and severity

Core Tip: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic impacts the number of cases and disease patterns that required acute care surgery. At the early stage of pandemic COVID-19, the case number of patients for surgery care decreased in hospitals from different countries. The decline was associated with the stay-home order and fear of COVID-19 infection. However, recent reports show that the case number for acute surgery returns to the normal level, which is comparable to that before the beginning of the pandemic. COVID-19 pandemic increases the severity of diseases, such as gallbladder disease and acute appendicitis. This change may be caused by factors including lack of regular follow-up and screening diagnosis and infection of viruses.