The potential impact of COVID-19 disease caused multi-organ injuries on patients' surgical outcomes

Purpose

To provide an expert commentary on the impact of prior COVID-19 infection on patient’s surgical outcomes and postoperative recovery. To highlight the need for greater focus on peri-operative care of patients who have recovered from COVID-19.

Methods

A narrative review of the literature was conducted by searching Pubmed and EMBASE for relevant articles using keywords such as “COVID-19”, “Coronavirus”, “surgery” and “peri-operative infection”.

Results

Post-COVID-19 condition also known as long COVID has an estimated incidence of between 3.0 to 11.7%. COVID-19 has been shown to cause a series of short and long-term sequelae including cardiopulmonary complications, renal impairment, chronic fatigue and muscular deconditioning. Peri-operative infection with COVID-19 is associated with increased peri-operative mortality. Elective surgery patients who developed COVID-19 were 26 times more likely to die whilst in hospital compared to controls without COVID-19 infection, and for emergency surgery patients with COVID-19 infection were six times more likely to die. A large international prospective cohort study identified that patients who had surgery delayed over 7 weeks from the date of COVID-19 infection had no increased 30-day postoperative mortality, except those with ongoing symptoms.

Conclusions

COVID-19 infection and its complications have been shown to adversely affect surgical outcomes. Further research is required to better characterise long COVID and the long-term sequelae that develop, which should be used to guide comprehensive peri-operative assessment of patients.

Graphical Abstract