Hoenle A, Wagner M, Lorenz S, Steinhart H. Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on hospital admissions for epistaxis in Germany. World J Methodol 2023; 13(5): 446-455 [PMID: 38229949 DOI: 10.5662/wjm.v13.i5.446]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Adrian Hoenle, BSc, MD, Doctor, Surgeon, Department of Ear, Nose and Throat, Head and Neck Surgery, Marienhospital Stuttgart, Boeheimstrasse 37, 70199 Stuttgart, Germany, Stuttgart 70199, Germany. adrian.hoenle@gmx.net
Research Domain of This Article
Otorhinolaryngology
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Methodol. Dec 20, 2023; 13(5): 446-455 Published online Dec 20, 2023. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v13.i5.446
Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on hospital admissions for epistaxis in Germany
Adrian Hoenle, Martin Wagner, Stephan Lorenz, Helmut Steinhart
Adrian Hoenle, Martin Wagner, Helmut Steinhart, Department of Ear, Nose and Throat, Head and Neck Surgery, Marienhospital Stuttgart, Stuttgart 70199, Germany
Stephan Lorenz, Department of Emergency Medicine, Katharinenhospital Stuttgart, Stuttgart 70174, Germany
Author contributions: Hoenle A designed the study, collected and analyzed the data, and wrote and edited the manuscript; Wagner M and Lorenz S collected data for the manuscript; Steinhart H assisted in study design and edited the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Ethikkommission Marienhospital Stuttgart Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous secondary clinical data which is publicly available.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at adrian.hoenle@gmx.net. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
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: Adrian Hoenle, BSc, MD, Doctor, Surgeon, Department of Ear, Nose and Throat, Head and Neck Surgery, Marienhospital Stuttgart, Boeheimstrasse 37, 70199 Stuttgart, Germany, Stuttgart 70199, Germany. adrian.hoenle@gmx.net
Received: June 26, 2023 Peer-review started: June 26, 2023 First decision: August 24, 2023 Revised: August 30, 2023 Accepted: September 28, 2023 Article in press: September 28, 2023 Published online: December 20, 2023 Processing time: 177 Days and 7.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant impact on healthcare systems worldwide. In an effort to reduce the spread of the virus, many countries have implemented lockdown measures that restrict movement and social interaction. While these measures have been effective in reducing the transmission of COVID-19, they have also had unintended consequences on healthcare delivery and hospital admissions. Several studies have reported a decrease in hospital admissions during the COVID-19 lockdown period. We showed that the pandemic-induced lockdown resulted in a direct decrease in hospitalizations especially for young patients with epistaxis and an immediate increase in hospitalizations with its end. This might be caused by fear of exposure to COVID-19, unintended consequences of public health recommendations to minimize non-urgent healthcare, or stay at home orders. These findings match with results from previous studies. Conversely, these measures did not lead to any change in older patients, which suggests that at least in this age group, the symptoms of epistaxis should not be underestimated, even with regard to a possible exposure to the coronavirus.
