Abstract
Background The coronavirus pandemic due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
is posing unprecedented challenges to health care systems around the globe. Consequently,
various lockdown scenarios have been politically imposed to get control over the spread
of this disease. We examined the impact of the lockdown situation on the number of
neurosurgical emergency patients admitted to our tertiary care center with a catchment
area of ∼2.2 million inhabitants in the south of Germany to ensure adequate neurosurgical
emergency care during a pandemic lockdown.
Methods All emergency admissions (with consecutive inpatient treatment) to the Department
of Neurosurgery at the University Medical Center Regensburg, Germany, between March
1 and May 8 (69 days) of the years 2018, 2019, and 2020 were retrospectively identified
and reviewed for this study. Demographic data, diagnoses, urgency of surgery, and
duration of the journey to the emergency room were examined.
Results Between March 1 and May 8, 2020, 59 emergency patients were neurosurgically treated
at our department. Compared with 2018 and 2019, emergency admissions in 2020 had thus
declined by 37.2 and 27.1%, respectively. Regarding the year 2020, we found a significant
drop from 1.71 and 1.52 emergency patients per day in January and February 2020, respectively,
to 0.86 during lockdown (p < 0.001). The decline especially concerned nontraumatic spinal cases and also patients
with other neurosurgical diagnoses such as intracranial hemorrhage. Evaluation of
the overall disease severity of admitted patients by means of the urgency of surgery
showed no difference between the baseline years and the lockdown period.
Conclusion Our findings are in line with other observational studies of neurosurgical, neurologic,
and cardiologic centers in Europe that have described a drop in emergency cases. The
reasons for this drop that seems to affect various medical fields and countries across
Europe are still unidentified. Morbidity and mortality rates are still unknown, and
efforts should be made to facilitate neurosurgical emergency care during a pandemic
lockdown.
Keywords
covid-19 - neurosurgical emergency - lockdown
