Unanticipated consequences of COVID-19 pandemic policies on pediatric acute appendicitis surgery
Timestops (7)
Tools Used
Topic Overview
Key Takeaways
- Complicated appendicitis rates increased significantly during COVID-19 pandemic (38.8% vs 28.3% pre-pandemic) at SickKids Toronto.
- Pandemic-era appendicitis patients were older and had higher readmission rates compared to pre-pandemic cohort.
- Delayed presentation during pandemic likely contributed to increased disease severity at time of surgical intervention.
- Study suggests pandemic healthcare access barriers affected pediatric surgical emergency outcomes beyond direct COVID illness.
- Clinicians should maintain high index of suspicion for advanced appendicitis in post-pandemic era given presentation delays.
Keywords
Hashtags
Transcript
Did you also feel that COVID-19 led to more complicated appendicitis? Hi, I'm Cecilia Jijena from Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and I think this is an article that you should know about. This is a retrospective cohort study done in the Hospital of Sick Children in Toronto, and they compared patients from a pre-pandemic period with a pandemic period to see what happened to acute appendicitis. And what did they find? They had 1,107 patients. 491 were from the pre-pandemic period, and 616 were from the pandemic period. The pandemic period had significantly more complicated appendicitis, which led to more readmissions rates. Patients from pre-pandemic period were significantly younger than those during the pandemic. So let us know what you think and stay tuned for more articles that you should know about.