• Pawel Rajwa, Mikolaj Przydacz, Wojciech Krajewski, Blazej Kuffel, Piotr Zapala, Aleksandra Krzywon, Alexander J Cortez, Bartosz Dybowski, Remigiusz Stamirowski, Marcin Jarzemski, Rafal B Drobot, Pawel Stelmach, Krystyna Mlynarek, Mateusz Marcinek, Maciej Przudzik, Wiktor Krawczyk, Jakub Ryszawy, Dominik Choragwicki, Lukasz Zapala, Marcin Lipa, Michal Pozniak, Dawid Janczak, Szymon Słomian, Jan Łaszkiewicz, Marcel Nowak, Marcin Miszczyk, Marek Roslan, Michał Tkocz, Romuald Zdrojowy, Andrzej Potyka, Tomasz Szydełko, Tomasz Drewa, Piotr Jarzemski, Piotr Radziszewski, Marcin Slojewski, Artur Antoniewicz, Andrzej Paradysz, and Piotr L Chlosta.
• Department of Urology, Medical University of Silesia, Zabrze, Poland.
• Arch Med Sci. 2021 Jan 1; 17 (5): 126212761262-1276.

IntroductionWe aimed to examine the change in the number and severity of visits to the emergency departments (EDs) and subsequent admissions for urgent urologic conditions in the early stage of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Poland.Material And MethodsWe evaluated data from 13 urologic centers in Poland and compared the number of visits to the EDs and subsequent admissions before and after the advent of COVID-19 in 2020, and before and after the escalating national restrictions. Furthermore, data on types of urologic complaints, crucial laboratory parameters, and post-admission procedures were analyzed.ResultsIn total 1,696 and 2,187 urologic visits (22.45% decrease) and 387 and 439 urologic urgent admissions (11.85% decrease) were reported in given periods in 2020 and 2019, respectively. The year-over-year difference in daily mean visits was clear (36.1 vs. 46.5; p < 0.001). Declines were seen in all complaints but device malfunction. In 2020 daily mean visits and admissions decreased from 40.9 and 9.6 before lockdowns to 30.9 (p < 0.001) and 6.9 (p = 0.001) after severe restrictions, respectively. There was a trend towards more negative laboratory parameter profiles in 2020, with patients who visited the EDs after severe restrictions having twice as high median levels of C-reactive protein (15.39 vs. 7.84, p = 0.03).ConclusionsThe observed declines in ED visits and admissions were apparent with the significant effect of national lockdowns. Our results indicate that some of the patients requiring urgent medical help did not appear at the ED or came later than they would have done before the pandemic, presenting with more severe complaints.Copyright: © 2020 Termedia & Banach.

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