Impact of Measures Taken to Contain COVID-19 on Hospital Surgical Care Services and Clinical Outcomes

February 28, 2024 updated by: Sean Shao Wei Lam, Singapore Health Services

Swift and decisive actions on the part of healthcare and hospital authorities are required to effectively contain the current COVID-19 pandemic. These measures firstly allow personnel and facilities leeway to provide surge capabilities to meet anticipated increased demands on the healthcare service. In addition, by deferring none urgent hospital visits, admissions and investigations, such measures support social distancing and aid attempts to control disease transmission. Deferring perceived non-urgent patient services may however lead to unintended delayed diagnoses and exacerbation of current patient conditions and lead to increased emergency admissions and surgeries.

A policy decision was made that essential surgical services pertaining to cancer and urgent cardiovascular surgery were allowed but that surgeons had the option to postpone what is assessed to be less urgent cases. Increasingly patients also postpone their surgeries or visits because of anxieties over the developing situation. Elective surgical services at the Outram Campus were thus significantly reduced from January 2020 as part of the measures to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.

The surgical philosophy during this period was that a judicious policy that allowed surgeons to proceed with surgery deemed critical but to postpone those deemed less so will at the system level, avoid poor outcomes for patients who required surgery and yet successfully re-allocate resources required to address the unfolding pandemic.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Detailed Description

Cohort of patients who were treated will be analysed via retrospective medical records review. These patients are classified according to the institution, type of surgical procedures, the medical condition and the dates of surgical treatment. The study will be compared across four time periods as listed:

-1Jan-31Dec2020 -1Jan-31Dec2019 -1Jan-31Dec2018 -1Jan-31Dec2017

The study focus on surgical indices for selected high-volume cancer and non-cancer diagnoses over the period 1st January 2020 to 31 December 2020 and compare them with similar indices across the same period of time in the preceding 3 years in particular, for the following surgical procedures:

  1. Surgeries for the following cancer diagnoses:

    1. breast cancer, [XIV- N60, no malignancy], [Malignant, II Neoplasms- C50], colorectal cancer, [C18, 19, 20],
    2. hepatocellular carcinoma, [C22]
  2. Selected non-cancer surgeries: a. Cholecystectomy b. Abdominal hernia repair

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Actual)

11000

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Singapore
      • Singapore, Singapore, 169856
        • Singapore Health Services Pte Ltd

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Sampling Method

Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

All patients coming to SGH for surgeries

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Patients who had the following surgeries during the period 01 Jan 2017 to 31 December 2020.

From the identified surgical procedure type as shown Surgeries for the following cancer-related procedures.

  1. Breast Cancer
  2. Colon Cancer
  3. Liver
  4. Rectum

Selected non-cancer surgeries.

  1. Abdominal Wall
  2. Gall bladder

Patients from SGH and its releated institute NCC Only local Singapore citizens

Exclusion Criteria:

No exclusion criteria

-

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Impact of measures taken to contain COVID-19 on hospital surgical care services and clinical outcomes
Time Frame: 4 years
Study seeks to assess the effect of the measures taken to contain COVID 19 on patients who need surgical services measured by patient outcomes, such as, length of hospital stay (LOS), ICU stay, APACHE score, stage of cancer at surgery.
4 years

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Singapore Health Services

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

July 17, 2020

Primary Completion (Actual)

November 30, 2023

Study Completion (Actual)

January 20, 2024

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

February 28, 2024

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 28, 2024

First Posted (Estimated)

February 29, 2024

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimated)

February 29, 2024

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 28, 2024

Last Verified

February 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2020/2706

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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