Study: COVID patients should delay surgery by 7 weeks to reduce death risk

A study has advised that surgery for other ailments in COVID-19 patients should be delayed by at least seven weeks to prevent the risk of death.

Some of the countries where the research was conducted include Nigeria, Australia, Brazil, China, India, the United Arab Emirates, UK, and the US.

According to NAN, experts at the University of Birmingham led more than 25,000 surgeons from 116 countries to arrive at the finding.

The researchers, part of the COVID surgery collaborative, collected data from 140,727 patients.

The patients were spread across 1,674 hospitals in the countries.

According to the study, surgeries that took place up to six weeks after the COVID-19 positive diagnosis were associated with an increased risk of death.

It was discovered that patients were more than “two-and-a-half times more likely to die” if the procedure took place six weeks following a positive diagnosis.

Adesoji Ademuyiwa, the research’s lead in Nigeria, said “it is imperative to determine the SARS-Cov-2 status of patients before going for surgery”.

Ademuyiwa, a professor at the department of surgery, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, said “surgery should be delayed in COVID-19 positive patients for at least seven weeks or more if it is not an emergency”.

Patients who became infected with COVID-19 after their surgeries were excluded from the study.

“Follow delay of seven weeks or more, patients with on-going COVID-19 symptoms (6 percent) had higher mortality than patients whose symptoms had resolved (2.4 percent) or who had been asymptomatic (1.3 percent),” the study showed.

Bhangu, the co-author of the publication from the University of Birmingham, said decisions regarding delaying surgery “should be tailored for each patient”.

“The possible advantages of a minimum seven-week delay following SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis, must be balanced against the potential risks of delay,” Bhangu added.

“For some urgent surgeries; for example for advanced tumours, surgeons and patients may decide that the risks of delay are not justified.”