Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Sisli Etfal Hastanesi tip bulteni, cilt.54, sa.2, ss.117-131, 2020 (ESCI)
The 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was initially seen in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. World Health Organization
classified COVID-19 as a pandemic after its rapid spread worldwide in a few months. With the pandemic, all elective surgeries and
non-emergency procedures have been postponed in our country, as in others. Most of the endocrine operations can be postponed
for a certain period. However, it must be kept in mind that these patients also need surgical treatment, and the delay time should
not cause a negative effect on the surgical outcome or disease process. It has recently been suggested that elective surgical interventions can be described as medically necessary, time-sensitive (MeNTS) procedures.
Some guidelines have been published on proper and safe surgery for both the healthcare providers and the patients after the
immediate onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We should know that these guidelines and recommendations are not meant to
constitute a position statement, the standard of care, or evidence-based/best practice. However, these are mostly the opinions
of a selected group of surgeons. Generally, only life-threatening emergency operations should be performed in the stage where
the epidemic exceeds the capacity of the hospitals (first stage), cancer and transplantation surgery should be initiated when the
outbreak begins to be controlled (second stage), and surgery for elective cases should be performed in a controlled manner with
suppression of the outbreak (third stage).
In this rapidly developing pandemic period, the plans and recommendations to be made on this subject are based on expert opinions by considering factors, such as the course and biology of the disease, rather than being evidence-based. In the recent reports
of many endocrine surgery associations and in various reviews, it has been stated that most of the cases can be postponed to the
third stage of the epidemic.
We aimed to evaluate the risk reduction strategies and recommendations that can help plan the surgery, prepare for surgery, protect
both patients and healthcare workers during the operation and care for the patients in the postoperative period in endocrine surgery.