How Future Surgery Will Benefit From Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Related Measures Perspective From Italian Young Surgeon Society (SPIGC)

Overview

The coronavirus 2019 pandemic (COVID-19) strongly affected clinical care worldwide. Due to a shortage of hospitals and beds in intensive care units (ICU), in Italy during outbreaks, surgical resources were temporarily and partially shifted to COVID-19 patients. In addition, the risk of cross-infection could have determined a shit in surgical perioperative care. To counterbalance these limitations, many centers routinely changed their clinical practice, which could be maintained by surgeons across Italy. The aim of the present study is to evaluate how the COVID-19 pandemic determined a change in daily clinical practice among all specialties.

The purpose of this investigation, organized by the Italian Young Surgeon Society (S.P.I.G.C.), is to establish the impact of the coronavirus 2019 pandemic (COVID-19) on clinical care in Italy. There will be collected from any Italian surgeon (resident, Fellow, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) candidate, attending surgeon, professor) impressions by completing a survey on this topic. The analysis is divided into three study periods. For each question, participants must answer for each period. Time frames were divided according to three distinct phases of the pandemic: pre-COVID-19 period, COVID-19 pandemic period, COVID-19 Endemic period. The pre-COVID-19 period was defined between eighth March 2019 and seventh March 2020, whereas the COVID-19 pandemic period was identified between the declaration of Italian lockdown measures (eighth March 2020) until the release of this questionnaire (sixteenth March 2022) with the periodic pandemic outbreaks. Finally, COVID-19 endemic period was described as a future phase where lockdown measures and social distancing will be removed.

Conditions