• Fadi Al Saiegh, Nikolaos Mouchtouris, Omaditya Khanna, Michael Baldassari, Thana Theofanis, Ritam Ghosh, Stavropoula Tjoumakaris, Michael Reid Gooch, Nabeel Herial, Hekmat Zarzour, Victor Romo, Michael Mahla, Robert Rosenwasser, and Pascal Jabbour.
• Department of Neurological Surgery, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
• World Neurosurg. 2021 Feb 1; 146: 202520-25.

AbstractThe COVID-19 outbreak has led to fundamental disruptions of health care and its delivery with sweeping implications for patients and physicians of all specialties, including neurosurgery. In an effort to conserve hospital resources, neurosurgical procedures were classified into tiers to determine which procedures have to be performed in a timely fashion and which ones can be temporarily suspended to aid in the hospital's reallocation of resources when equipment is scarce. These guidelines were created quickly based on little existing evidence, and thus were initially variable and required refinement. As the early wave can now be assessed in retrospect, the authors describe the lessons learned and the protocols established based on published global evidence to continue to practice neurosurgery sensibly and minimize disruptions. These operational protocols can be applied in a surge of COVID-19 or another airborne pandemic.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

21 keywords...

hide…