Consultations During COVID: Effects of a Pandemic on Neurosurgical Care

COVID-19 has impacted neurosurgical care around the world. But reports describing patient admission trends during the pandemic have provided limited time frames and diagnoses. The purpose of this paper was to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on neurosurgical care provided to our emergency department during the outbreak.

Patient admission data were collected based on a list of 35 ICD-10 codes, which were placed into 1 of 4 categories: head and spine trauma ("Trauma"), head and spine infection ("Infection"), degenerative spine ("Degenerative"), and subarachnoid hemorrhage/brain tumor ("Control"). Emergency department (ED) consultations to the Neurosurgery Department were collected from March 2018 to March 2022, representing 2 years before COVID and 2 years of pandemic. We hypothesized that Control cases would remain stable throughout the 2 time periods while Trauma and Infection would decrease. Because of widespread clinic restrictions, we postulated Degenerative (spine) cases presenting to the ED would increase.

During the first 2 years of the COVID pandemic, Neurosurgical Trauma and Degenerative ED patients decreased compared with prepandemic levels, while Cranial and Spinal infections increased and continued to do so during the pandemic period studied. Brain tumors and subarachnoid hemorrhages (Control cases) did not change in a significant way throughout the 4-year analysis.

The COVID pandemic significantly altered the demographics of our Neurosurgical ED patient population and continues to do so.