Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Emergency General Surgery Outcomes: a Single-center Cohort Study

The volume and disease severity of emergency general surgery admissions between the first six-month period of the pandemic and the similar time period in the prepandemic period in 2019 will be compared.

Patients admitted during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, from March 11 to September 11, 2020, will be included. As a comparison group, similar data will be collected on patients admitted to the general surgery department during the same period in 2019. Patient and disease characteristics, including demographics, initial leukocyte and C-reactive protein levels, diagnosis, treatment strategies, complications, duration of hospital stay, 30-day rehospitalization rate, and 30-day reoperation rate will be reviewed. Complications will be classified according to Clavien-Dindo classification. Tokyo Guidelines 2018/2013 will be used to assess the severity of the acute cholecystitis.

After the patients are divided into two groups: (1) prepandemic period and (2) pandemic period, descriptive statistics will be presented as the medians and ranges, and frequencies (%). Associations between variables will be evaluated using the Mann-Whitney U test (for continuous variables) or Pearson's chi-square and Fisher exact tests (for categorical variables), where appropriate.