• World Neurosurg · Feb 2021

    Pediatric neurosurgery after the COVID-19 pandemic: management strategies from a single pediatric hospital in Italy.

    • Marco Ceraudo, Alberto Balestrino, Armando Cama, Gianni Macrina, Gianluca Piatelli, and Alessandro Consales.
    • Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Neurosciences, Rehabilitation, Ophthalmology, Genetics, Maternal and Child Health, Policlinico San Martino-IRCCS Hospital, Genoa, Italy. Electronic address: ceraudom@91gmail.com.
    • World Neurosurg. 2021 Feb 1; 146: e1079e1082e1079-e1082.

    BackgroundCoronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had a great impact over all elective neurosurgical activity and important implications in management of neurosurgical urgencies. During the pandemic, some pediatric hospitals reported their experiences. After the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health care system needs to be reorganized to again manage all nonurgent activities, while ensuring safety of both patients and health care workers.MethodsWe developed preventive measures to limit any possibility of COVID-19 spread, according to the principles of epidemiologic prevention and suggestions from recent literature. To evaluate the efficacy of these measures, we retrospectively reviewed the neurosurgical activity at our institution from May 4 to July 15, 2020.ResultsOne hundred nineteen patients were admitted to the neurosurgical ward, and 80 surgical procedures were performed. Furthermore, 130 outpatient clinics were scheduled. A total of 258 nasopharyngeal swabs and 249 specific interviews were performed. In our series, no cases of positivity for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 infection were found, and no surgical cases were postponed.DiscussionWe present the management of the neurosurgical activity after the emergency phase at the Neurosurgical Department of Giannina Gaslini Children's Hospital in Genoa, Italy.ConclusionsThe Italian health care system is undertaking a process of reorganization of resources, in an attempt to restore all nonurgent activities while ensuring safety. After the emergency phase, we are learning to live together with COVID-19 and, although epidemiologic data are encouraging, we must be prepared for an eventual second peak.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…