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PETALING JAYA: Over 28 million elective surgeries across the globe could be canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to patients facing a lengthy wait for their health issues to be resolved, a new study reveals.
The CovidSurg Collaborative has projected that, based on a 12-week period of peak disruption to hospital services due to Covid-19, 28.4 million elective surgeries worldwide are at risk of cancellation or postponement in 2020.
CovidSurg comprises surgeons and anaesthetists, with representation from Canada, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Singapore, Spain, the UK and the US.
The modeling study, published in the British Journal of Surgery, indicates that each additional week of disruption to hospital services will be associated with a further 2.4 million cancellations.
Led by researchers at the University of Birmingham, detailed information was collected from surgeons across 359 hospitals and 71 countries, including Malaysia, on plans for cancellation of elective surgery.
Among the participating Malaysian hospitals, the overall surgery cancellation rate was 70.9%. The surgeries most subject to cancellation were those for benign diseases (81.5%), followed by cancer surgery (41%) and obstetrics (26.1%).
Taking this into consideration, the College of Surgeons, Academy of Medicine of Malaysia (CSAMM) has provided regular guidance to its members on tailoring delivery of surgical services, according to individual hospital capacity, local Covid-19 epidemiology and Movement Control Order conditions.
CSAMM President, Prof Dr April Camilla Roslani, said this has avoided a complete shutdown of elective surgeries nationally, allowing those that need urgent surgery to be treated, thus preventing unnecessary deaths, while minimizing disease transmission. Inter-hospital collaborations, between public and private sectors, have been instrumental in mitigating the disruption to
The gobal data was statistically modeled to estimate the total number of canceled surgeries across 190 countries. The researchers project that worldwide 72.3% of planned surgeries would be canceled through the peak period of Covid-19 related disruption. Most canceled surgeries will be for non-cancer conditions.
Orthopedic procedures will be canceled most frequently, with 6.3 million orthopedic surgeries canceled worldwide over a 12-week period. It is also projected that globally 2.3 million cancer surgeries will be canceled or postponed.
The predicted global backlog for a 12-week cancellation was 151,717 surgeries, with an 11-month backlog clearance time even if a 20% increase in pre-pandemic surgery numbers is possible.
In the UK, the National Health Service advised hospitals to cancel most elective surgeries for 12 weeks.
It is estimated that this will result in 516,000 canceled surgeries, including 36,000 cancer procedures. These cancellations will create a backlog that will need to be cleared after the Covid-19 disruption ends.
If, after the disruption ends, the NHS increases the number of surgeries performed each week by 20% compared to pre-pandemic activity, it will take 11 months to clear the backlog.
However, each additional week of disruption will lead to the cancellation of an extra 43,300 surgeries, significantly extending the period it will take to clear the backlog.
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