Study on Incidence of Elective Surgery Postponed During COVID-19 Pandemic in Geriatric Population

Overview

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted routine hospital services globally. The hospital services include surgeries for benign diseases, cancer surgery and obstetric surgery. A study conducted by CovidSurg Collaborative estimated that 28,404,603 operations would be cancelled or postponed during the peak 12 weeks of disruption due to COVID-19. Globally, 81.7% of benign surgery, 37.7% of cancer surgery and 25.4% of elective Caesarean sections would be cancelled or postponed. If countries increase their normal surgical volume by 20% post-pandemic, it would take a median 45 weeks to clear the backlog of operations resulting from COVID-19 disruption. This study aims to estimate total number of elective operations postponed during COVID-19 in geriatric population.

An audit study will be conducted among geriatric patients that are admitted for elective surgeries in University Malaya Medical center (UMMC). Patients who fulfil inclusion/ exclusion criteria will be recruited with consent and will have a face-to-face interview in the surgical ward prior to their elective surgeries. Data collection in the form of a questionnaire designed in English and filled up by the research interviewer is created to document patient demography, surgical details and level of depression/ anxiety prior to surgery. The primary objective of this study is to find incidence of elective surgeries has postponed during COVID-19 pandemic in geriatric population. This overarching aim raises two secondary objectives of the research: 1. To find the incidents of cancer surgeries postponed during COVID-19 pandemic in geriatric population. 2. To find the physical and psychological impact of postponed elective surgery in geriatric population during COVID-19 pandemic. Random convenience sampling will be conducted. Data will be collected using REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) system and analyzed using SPSS software. Results will be presented as mean ± standard deviation, median or frequency (percentages) as appropriate. Mann-Whitney U test will be used for non-normally distributed data while t test will be used for normally distributed data. The qualitative data analysis will be performed using chi-square test or Fisher's exact test if insufficient numbers are present. A p value \< 0.05 will be considered statistically significant.