COVID‐19 heath crisis: less colorectal resections and yet no more peritonitis or bowel obstruction as a collateral effect?

Collard, Maxime K.; Lefèvre, Jérémie H.; Batteux, François; Parc, Yann

Because of the rapid worldwide propagation of COVID‐19 (coronavirus disease 2019), each health care system had to urgently adapt with all efforts aimed to maximize the capacity of treatment for infected patients. With this in mind, the President of the French Republic declared on March 12, 2020: “Non‐essential hospital care will be postponed, i.e. surgical procedures that are not urgent.” But, in spite of the effort deployed by each hospital to provide a sufficient capacity of treatment for patients requiring a surgical procedure as an emergency, we have observed that the management of these patients have been largely affected, not because of a lack of resources but because of a surprising lack of patients.