Investigating the real impact of covid-19 pandemic on the daily neurosurgical practice?

Dannhoff, Guillaume; Cebula, Hélène; Chibbaro, Salvatore; Ganau, Mario; Todeschi, Julien; Mallereau, Charles-Henry; Pottecher, Julien; Proust, François; Ollivier, Irène

Objective: The objective of this study was to relate the neurosurgical activity during a time of sanitary crisis such as experienced during the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic. Methods: A monocentric retrospective analysis was made based on a prospectively gathered cohort of all patients requiring neurosurgical care between March 15th and May 12th, 2020. Local impact of SARS-CoV-2 was analysed regarding number of patients admitted in ICU. Results: 160 patients could benefit from neurosurgical care with a wide-ranging profile of clinical and surgical activities performed during the study that seemed similar to last year profile activity. Surgical indications were restricted to nondeferrable surgeries, leading to a drop in operative volume of 50%. Only 1,3% of patients required transfer to other units due to the impossibility of providing gold standard neurosurgical care in our centre. Conclusion: Despite the challenges represented by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, it was proven possible to assure the routine neurosurgical continuity and provide high standards of neurosurgical care without compromising patients’ access to the required treatments.