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- Evan Luther, Ian Ramsay, Vaidya Govindarajan, Chandler N Berke, Vivien Makhoul, Martin Merenzon, Katherine Berry, Alexis Morell, Daniel Eichberg, Victor Lu, Ashish Shah, Ricardo J Komotar, and Michael E Ivan.
- University of Miami Department of Neurological Surgery, 1095 NW 14th Terrace, 2nd Floor, Miami, Florida, 33136, USA. Electronic address: evanluthermd@gmail.com.
- World Neurosurg. 2024 Apr 5.
PurposeAs the COVID-19 pandemic spread to the United States in 2020, there was an impetus towards postponing or ceasing non-urgent transsphenoidal pituitary surgeries to prevent spread of the virus. Some centers encouraged transcranial approaches for patients with declining neurologic function. However, no large-scale data exists evaluating the effects this had on national pituitary practice patterns.MethodsPituitary surgeries in the National Inpatient Sample were identified from 2017-2020. Surgeries in 2020 were compared to the three years prior to determine any differences in demographics, surgical trends/approaches and perioperative outcomes. In 2020, there was a decline in overall pituitary surgeries (34.2 vs. 36.3%, odds ratio (OR) 0.88, p<0.001) yet transsphenoidal approaches represented a higher proportion of interventions (69.0 vs. 64.9%, p<0.001). Neurosurgical complications were higher (51.9 vs. 47.4%, OR 1.13, p<0.001) and patients were less likely to be discharged home (86.4 vs. 88.5%, OR 0.84, p<0.001). This was especially true in April 2020 during the first peak in COVID-19 cases when transcranial approaches and odds of mortality/complications were highest.ConclusionsIn 2020, transsphenoidal surgery remained the preferred approach for pituitary tumor resection despite initial recommendations against the approach to prevent COVID-19 spread. Pituitary surgeries had a higher risk of periprocedural complications despite accounting for preoperative comorbidities, COVID-19 infection status, and surgical approach, suggesting that an overwhelmed hospital system can negatively influence surgical outcomes in non-infected patients.Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.
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