P071 SURGERY DURING COVID ERA - IMPACT IN ABDOMINAL WALL SURGERY - OUR EXPERIENCE

Aim “COVID pandemic created unprecedented challenges for actual health care systems with hundreds of surgeries suspended with impact in Abdominal Wall Surgery (AWS) and other benign diseases. With this in mind, we implemented new and dedicated clinical pathways to allow more patients to be operated in outpatient regime, so we could have more availability of beds, staff and resources for COVID assistance.” Material and Methods “A retrospective observational study was conducted using data since January 2018 to May 2021. Our Hospital and Surgical Department suffered great organizational changes, namely creation of: dedicated medical and staff teams for COVID + (C+) and COVID- (C-) patients; dedicated pathways in our operating rooms for C+ cases; and, ultimately, designed and implemented protocols and agreements to maintain our Department fully operational, with a secure shift from elective to outpatient surgeries.” Results “During the study, a global number of 2541 AWS were performed. In the era pre-COVID (2018 - February 2020), we performed 968 surgeries with an average number of 37,2 AWS/month. Despite COVID pandemic (march 2020 - may 2021), our department performed a total of 1573 AWS, with an average number of 112,4 AWS/month. In resume, during COVID era, we increased AWS by more than 300%.” Conclusions “This study found that, inner organizational adaptations and creation of dedicated protocols/clinical pathways can maintain surgical departments performance despite the stress and uncertainty of a pandemic like COVID-19 with a very positive impact on benign pathologies such as AWS.”