Analysis of General Surgical Consultations Requested From The Emergency Department in the Period of Pandemic and Non-Pandemic

Objective: To investigate the emergency department admissions, the general surgery consultation request, and the necessity of immediate treatment of patients despite the fact that the society did not leave the house unless necessary during the pandemic period. Methods: The files of patients who admitted to the emergency department and whose general surgery consultation was requested due to urgent surgical treatment were retrospectively scanned between March-May 2020, which is the Covid 19 pandemic period and March-May 2019, as a time period in which normal social life continues. Age, gender, complaints, comorbid diseases, the necessity of truly emergency surgical treatment as well as the socioeconomic level scale for each individual were recorded and analyzed. Results: The rate of request for consultation was 2.7% (n = 170) in the pandemic period, and 3.1% (n = 316) in the non-pandemic period. In both periods, no statistically significant difference was found in the distribution of genders according to the treatment(p> 0.05). The complaints of the patients were similar in both periods, and the most common complaints were nausea-abdominal pain-difficulty defecation. Although individuals without comorbidities are predominant in both periods, the proportion of individuals with comorbid diseases was higher during the pandemic period (p = 0.001). Patients who did not require urgent treatment in both periods were in the majority. In patients requiring urgent treatment, the rate of the hospitalized patients was higher during the pandemic period, whereas the rate of the operated patients was higher in the non-pandemic period (p = 0.005). The majority of the patients had a low socioeconomic level and a small portion had a moderate socioeconomic level in both periods (p> 0.05). In addition, patients with a low socioeconomic level and 75 years of age or older who did not require urgent treatment were higher in the pandemic period (p = 0.002). Conclusion: Although there is a significant decrease in the number of emergency department admissions and the number of general surgical consultations requested during the pandemic period, the fact that more than half of the patients who are consulted do not require emergency surgical treatment still shows the unnecessary use of emergency services.