Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Mar 27, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 27, 2020 - Apr 20, 2020
Date Accepted: May 13, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: May 15, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
COVID-19 and laparoscopic surgery; are we underestimating the risks? A narrative review of current literature and local expertise.
ABSTRACT
Background:
The current COVID19 pandemic is holding the world in its grip. Epidemiologist have shown that the mortality risks are higher when the health care system falls under the COVID19 pressure. It is therefore, of great importance to keep health care providers (HCP) healthy and prevent contamination.
Objective:
To provide an overview of current knowledge and expert opinions about laparoscopic surgery on a COVID19 positive patient
Methods:
This paper discusses the current literature about five possible transmission routes during laparoscopic surgery by performing a narrative review.
Results:
The discussed contamination routes are; the operating room positive pressure, in- and extubation, smoke evacuation, tissue extraction and de-sufflation of the abdomen after surgery. We conclude that there is minimal evidence to actually determine the HCP risks during laparoscopic surgery. But there is enough knowledge either coming in from recent studies in China or from previous studies over surgical contamination risks, to formulate best practice advices for all five routes.
Conclusions:
To our opinion there is no reason to abandon laparoscopic surgery over open surgery. But do not underestimate the risks, perform surgery on COVID19 positive patients only when really necessary, and keep use logical and common sense to protect yourself and others by performing surgery in a save and protected environment.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.