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©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Hospital admissions from alcohol-related acute pancreatitis during the COVID-19 pandemic: A single-centre study
Wai Kin Mak, Davide Di Mauro, Eleanor Pearce, Laura Karran, Aye Myintmo, Jessica Duckworth, Amira Orabi, Rebekah Lane, Sophie Holloway, Antonio Manzelli, Somayyeh Mossadegh
Wai Kin Mak, Davide Di Mauro, Aye Myintmo, Jessica Duckworth, Amira Orabi, Rebekah Lane, Sophie Holloway, Antonio Manzelli, Upper GI Surgery, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, Exeter EX2 5DW, United Kingdom
Eleanor Pearce, General Surgery, Torbay Hospital, Torquay TQ2 7AA, United Kingdom
Laura Karran, General Surgery, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London SW10 9NH, United Kingdom
Somayyeh Mossadegh, General Surgery, Royal Cornwall Hospital Treliske, Truro TR1 3LJ, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Mak WK, Di Mauro D and Mossadegh S contributed to the methodology; Di Mauro D, Manzelli A and Mossadegh S contributed to conceptualization; Mak WK, Pearce E, Karran L, Myintmo A, Duckworth J, Orabi A, Lane R and Holloway S contributed to formal analysis and investigation; Mak WK contributed to writing – original draft preparation; Mak WK, Di Mauro D and Mossadegh S contribute to writing – review and editing; Manzelli A and Mossadegh S contributed to supervision; all authors contributed to the study conception and design, commented on previous versions of the manuscript and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study has been registered and approved by the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust Governance Board-reference number 20-4628.
Informed consent statement: All patient data was fully anonymized at the time of collection and therefore individual informed consent was not required.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are no conflicts of interest to report.
Data sharing statement: The dataset analysed during the current study is not publicly available, in accordance with the Confidentiality Policy in force at the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust; this is a legal requirement under the Data Protection Act 2018 (United Kingdom). Data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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: Wai Kin Mak, MBBS, Doctor, Upper GI Surgery, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, Barrack Road, Exeter EX2 5DW, United Kingdom. w.mak@nhs.net
Received: December 8, 2021
Peer-review started: December 8, 2021
First decision: January 8, 2022
Revised: January 24, 2022
Accepted: June 30, 2022
Article in press: June 30, 2022
Published online: September 6, 2022
Processing time: 260 Days and 17.3 Hours
BACKGROUND
The United Kingdom government introduced lockdown restrictions for the first time on 23 March 2020 due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. These were partially lifted on 15 June and further eased on 4 July. Changes in social behaviour, including increased alcohol consumption were described at the time. However, there were no data available to consider the impact of these changes on the number of alcohol-related disease admissions, specifically alcohol-related acute pancreatitis (AP). This study evaluated the trend of alcohol-related AP admissions at a single centre during the initial COVID-19 lockdown.
AIM
To evaluate the trend in alcohol-related AP admissions at a single centre during the initial COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom.
METHODS
All patients admitted with alcohol-related AP from March to September 2016 to 2020 were considered in this study. Patient demographics, their initial presentation with AP, any recurrent admissions, disease severity and length of stay, were evaluated using ANOVA and χ2 and Kruskal–Wallis tests.
RESULTS
One hundred and thirty-six patients were included in the study. The highest total number of AP admissions was seen in March–September 2019 and the highest single-month period was in March–May 2020. Admissions for first-time presentations of AP were highest in 2020 compared to other year groups and were significantly higher compared to previous years, for example, 2016 (P < 0.05). Furthermore, the rate of admissions decreased by 38.89% between March–May 2020 and June–September 2020 (P < 0.05), coinciding with the easing of lockdown restrictions. This significant decrease was not observed in the previous year groups during those same time periods. Admissions for recurrent AP were highest in 2019. The median length of hospital stay did not differ between patients from each of the year groups.
CONCLUSION
An increased number of admissions for alcohol-related AP were observed during months when lockdown restrictions were enforced; a fall in figures was noted when restrictions were eased.
Core tip: The coronavirus disease 2019 lockdowns have seen a shift in the population’s social behaviour. Studies have shown an increase in alcohol consumption in the general population over the lockdown period. A retrospective study was performed and observed a rise in alcohol-related pancreatitis admissions during the pandemic. In this context we observed higher admission numbers for alcohol-related pancreatitis during the time when restrictions were in place, and numbers reduced once restrictions were eased.
