Measures against COVID-19 pandemic – a single tertiary center experience

Abstract

This paper reports the measures taken to manage the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on O&G services in a tertiary referal centre and their outcomes. All the patients included in this study received inpatient treatment and underwent surgery between March 10 2020 and end of June 2020, including obstetric or gynaecologic cases combined. Data including age, diagnosis, operation, duration of preoperative and postoperative hospital stay, COVID-19 status were recorded. COVID-19 status of the patients was diagnosed with a nasopharyngeal swab test. Thirty-seven (20%) of 177 operations were performed because of gynaecologic reasons. The rest of them were caesarean sections (C/S). In gynaecologic cases, 22 (59%) of 37 were emergent operations, nine (24%) cases were oncologic and six (16%) cases were elective gynaecological surgeries. On the other hand, 43 (30%) of 140 patients, who underwent caesarean sections, were urgent surgeries. The rest were elective and planned caesarean sections. Only five patients (2.8%) who had undergone caesarean sections were tested positive for COVID-19. No COVID-19 transmission to staff was recorded in this period. Measures against the COVID-19 pandemic must be multidisciplinary and is crucial to prevent the spread of the disease to staff in close contact.

Impact Statement

• What is already known on this subject? COVID-19 pandemic has been a crucial health problem worldwide. Healthcare workers work intensely to protect people from the pandemic. It is especially important to protect healthcare professionals and hospitalized patients from virus transmission. Therefore, utilization of personal protective equipment such as masks, gloves and goggles is obligatory, and hygiene rules such as sanitization of hands are strictly followed.

• What the results of this study add? This study adds the experience and success of a tertiary centre regarding the measure against COVID-19 to the literature. No viral transmission was detected to healthcare workers and other patients from COVID-19 patients. Hence, measures that mentioned in the present study should be an example to other centres for protection against pandemic.

• What the implications are of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? As mentioned above, measures that are explained in the present study should be an example to other centres for protection against the pandemic. Further larger size clinical studies are needed to prove the beneficial effect of the measures that still used against pandemic.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• hospital management

Author contributions

OI: manuscript writing, data management, data analysis. BS: project development and administration. SK: review of the manuscript. HK: data collection and analysis. SK: supervision. EC: review of the manuscript, data management.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.