COVID-19 and Neurosurgery. Literature and Neurosurgical Societies Recommendations Update.

Germanò, Antonino; Raffa, Giovanni; Angileri, Filippo Flavio; Cardali, Salvatore Massimiliano; Tomasello, Francesco

Abstract Background Since January 2020, 3 months ago, when the pathogen causing the Coronavirus-disease was identified in humans, the literature on COVID-19 has grown exponentially to over 4000 publications. There is the need to provide an update for each single medical discipline, including neurosurgery, to be used by single professionals or to be distributed through the neurosurgical community and to be used by governments in designing new scenario of care. Methods A review of the MEDLINE database was performed on April 13th, 2020. Search terms included “COVID-19”, “neurosurgery,” and “surgery”. A review of documents published on the web-page of the WFNS and of the 5 continental associations of neurosurgical societies AANS, AASNS, CAANS, EANS, and FLANC representing the 119 national Neurosurgical Societies around the world was performed. Results The literature search yielded 38 results that were manually reviewed. Fourteen manuscripts were considered eligible. They described suggestions and considerations to optimize care of neurosurgical patients, editorials on operational models, perspectives from neurosurgical departments, letters to the editor describing experiences on how to help medical staff to be prepared in advance for pandemic situations, description of regional or departmental models and/or organizational schemes. The webpages of the searched societies reported a total of 57 documents. Conclusions The neurosurgical scientific community has promptly reacted to the COVID-19 outbreak by producing a growing number of documents that could serve as guidance for neurosurgeons all over the world. Neurosurgical Societies will represent the key-institutions for guiding the neurosurgical community to overcome the COVID-19 crisis.