Surgery today
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Surgical volume reduction and the announcement of triage during the 1st wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan: a cohort study using an interrupted time series analysis.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has caused unprecedented challenges for surgical staffs to minimize exposure to COVID-19 or save medical resources without harmful patient outcomes, in accordance with the statement of each surgical society. No research has empirically validated declines in surgical volume in Japan, based on the usage of surgical triage. We aimed to identify whether the announcement of surgical priorities by each Japanese surgical society may have affected the surgical volume decline during the 1st wave of this pandemic. ⋯ Non-critical surgeries showed obvious and statistically significant declines in case volume during the 1st wave of the COVID-19 pandemic according to the statement of each surgical society in Japan.