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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 15|pp 15771—15783

The effect of emergency surgery on acute abdomen patients with COVID-19 pneumonia: a retrospective observational study

Ning Zhao1, Liang Wu1, Yifeng Cheng2, Hai Zheng3, Ping Hu3, Chaojie Hu3, Ding Chen3, Peng Xu3, Qingyong Chen3, Ping Cheng3, Jinhuang Chen3, Gang Zhao3
  • 1Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China
  • 2Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Union Hospital West Campus, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430056, China
  • 3Department of Emergency Surgery, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China
* Equal contribution
Received: May 18, 2020Accepted: July 14, 2020Published: August 15, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103839

Copyright © 2020 Zhao et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

During the COVID-19 outbreak, some patients with COVID-19 pneumonia also suffered from acute abdomen requiring surgical treatment; however, there is no consensus for the treatment of such patients. In this study, we retrospectively reviewed 34 patients with acute abdomen who underwent emergency surgery during the COVID-19 outbreak. Among the 34 patients with acute abdomen, a total of six cases were found with COVID-19 pneumonia (clinical classification for COVID-19 pneumonia: all were the common type). On the premise of similar demographics between both groups, patients with COVID-19 pneumonia had worse indicators of liver and coagulation function. Compared with acute abdomen patients without COVID-19, patients with COVID-19 pneumonia had a longer hospital stay, but there were no significant differences in postsurgical complications (P = 0.58) or clinical outcomes (P = 0.56). In addition, an obvious resolution of lung inflammation after surgery was observed in five COVID-19 patients (83.3%). No new COVID-19 cases occurred during the patients’ hospital stays. Therefore, for the common type of COVID-19 pneumonia, emergency surgery could not only improve the outcomes of COVID-19 pneumonia patients with acute abdomen, but also benefit the resolution of pulmonary inflammation.