Impact of COVID-19 on the outcomes of gastrointestinal surgery

COVID-19 pandemic has brought a paradigm shift in the treatment of various surgical gastrointestinal disorders. Given the increasing number of patients requiring hospitalization and intensive care for SARS-CoV-2 infections, various surgical departments worldwide were forced to stop or postpone elective surgeries to save the health resources for COVID-19 patients. Since the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic by the World Health Organization on 12th March 2020, the recommendations from the surgical societies kept evolving to help the surgeons in making informed decisions regarding patient care. Moreover, various socio-economic and epidemiological factors have come into play while deciding the optimal approach towards patients requiring gastrointestinal surgery. Surgeries for many abdominal diseases such as acute appendicitis and acute calculous cholecystitis were postponed. Elective surgeries were triaged based on the urgency of performing the surgical procedure, the hospital burden of COVID-19 patients, and the availability of healthcare resources. Various measures were adopted such as preoperative screening for SARS-CoV-2 infection, use of personal protective equipment, and the COVID-19-free surgical pathway to prevent perioperative SARS-CoV-2 transmission. In this article, we have reviewed the recent studies reporting the outcomes of various gastrointestinal surgeries in the COVID-19 pandemic era and the recommendations from various surgical societies on the safety precautions to be followed during gastrointestinal surgery.