The Journal of urology
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The Journal of urology · Jan 2021
A Critical Appraisal of the ACS "Medically-Necessary, Time-Sensitive Procedures" (MeNTS) Scoring System, Urology Consensus Recommendations, and Individual Surgeon Case Prioritization for Resumption of Elective Urologic Surgery During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Resumption of elective urology cases postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic requires a systematic approach to case prioritization, which may be based on detailed cross-specialty questionnaires, specialty specific published expert opinion or by individual (operating) surgeon review. We evaluated whether each of these systems effectively stratifies cases and for agreement between approaches in order to inform departmental policy. ⋯ Questionnaire based, expert opinion based and individual surgeon based approaches to case prioritization result in significantly different case prioritization. Questionnaire based surgical prioritization did not meaningfully stratify urological cases, and consensus/expert opinion based surgical prioritization and individual surgeon based surgical prioritization frequently disagreed. The strengths and weaknesses of each of these systems should be considered in future disaster planning scenarios.