Citation

Bakir S, Lefering R, Auerbach L, Ekkernkamp A. Dtsch. Arztebl. Int. 2023; 120(23): 400-401.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag)

DOI

10.3238/arztebl.m2023.0013

PMID

37561002

Abstract

Over the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on medical care in Germany. While intensive care units (ICUs) were directly affected by symptomatic COVID patients requiring treatment, the pandemic also had an indirect impact on the surgical specialties, for example by reducing the ability to perform surgical procedures (1). The aim of this analysis of data from the TraumaRegister DGU (TR-DGU) of the German Society of Trauma Surgery (DGU, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Unfallchirurgie) was to find out to what extent the care of persons with severe trauma was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, the extent to which increased hygiene measures changed the absolute treatment time in patients with uncertain COVID-19 status was to be analyzed, for example the time interval from prehospital care initiation or from the patient's arrival in the shock room to the performance of computed tomography (CT) or the start of a surgical procedure.

Language: en

Keywords

Humans; Quality of Health Care; Pandemics; Registries; *COVID-19; *Multiple Trauma; Germany/epidemiology