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| LETTER TO THE EDITOR |
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| Year : 2021 | Volume
: 54
| Issue : 2 | Page : 77 |
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Surgery-related COVID-19: A note
Rujittika Mungmunpuntipantip1, Viroj Wiwanitkit2
1 Private Academic Practice, Bangkok, Thailand
2 Department of Community Medicine, Dr. DY Patil University, Pune, Maharashtra, India; Department of Tropical Medicine, Hainan Medical University, Haikou, China; Department of Biological Science, Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ikeji-Arakeji, Nigeria; Department of Medical Science, Faculty of Medicine, University of Nis, Nis, Serbia
| Date of Submission | 29-Mar-2020 |
| Date of Decision | 20-Aug-2020 |
| Date of Acceptance | 18-Nov-2020 |
| Date of Web Publication | 20-Mar-2021 |
Correspondence Address:
Rujittika Mungmunpuntipantip
Private Academic Practice, Bangkok
Thailand
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None
DOI: 10.4103/fjs.fjs_39_20
How to cite this article:
Mungmunpuntipantip R, Wiwanitkit V. Surgery-related COVID-19: A note. Formos J Surg 2021;54:77 |
Dear Editor,
COVID-19 pandemic is the present global public health crisis. After its occurrence in the Republic of China in December 2019,[1] pandemic occurs in March 2020. The novel coronavirus is a highly contagious pathogen. Closed contact in crowded place is a risk for COVID-19 transmission. Medical personal is a group that has a high risk of getting COVID-19 due to closed contact with several patients in daily practice.[2],[3] There are some case reports on COVID-19 among medical personnel from China and Thailand.[4],[5] In a hospital, surgery is an important department. The surgery infection is an important issue in surgery. Regarding COVID-19, limited data are on the surgical infection.
Here, the authors would like to share data from the second country that COVID-19 has been occurred since January 2020.[6] According to the local data on March 27, 2020, there are 1136 cases of COVID-19 and there are two surgery-related COVID-19 cases. The first case is a presymptomatic COVID-19 who got hand surgery before the development of COVID-19 symptom at postoperative ward. The second case is a surgeon who got infection and developed a mild illness. This surgeon performed an operation on a COVID-19 who had no clinical symptom. The situation resulted in necessary quarantine requirement of many medical personnel and patients in the medical center. Focusing on the two indexed cases, the disease is not serious. The supportive treatment with isolation is given and there is a complete recovery in each case. There is no other person who got a continuous infection from these indexed cases. These data can show that COVID-19 is the present emerging issue in surgical infection. There should be a good system for the management of presymptomatic COVID case that might spread disease during a surgery procedure. Either patients or surgeons are possible sources of disease spreading. Corresponding to these incidences, the raised consideration is how to prevent the presymptomatic COVID-19 patient to spread the disease. In general, all patients have to pass screening for fever before entering into the medical center and all medical members have to pass this same process as well as getting regular COVID-19 screening. All non-emergency and elective operations are postponed and the COVID-19 screening is a prerequisite for any patient before having an operation in the operating theater.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| References | |  |
| 1. | Hsia, W. Emerging new coronavirus infection in Wuhan, China: Situation in early 2020. Case Study Case Rep 2020;10:8-9.  |
| 2. | Huh S. How to train the health personnel for protecting themselves from novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infection during their patient or suspected case care. J Educ Eval Health Prof 2020;17:10. |
| 3. | Glauser W. Proposed protocol to keep COVID-19 out of hospitals. CMAJ 2020;192:E264-5. |
| 4. | Joob B, Wiwanitkit V. COVID-19 in medical personnel: Observation from Thailand. J Hosp Infect 2020;104:453. |
| 5. | Liu M, He P, Liu HG, Wang XJ, Li FJ, Chen S, et al. Clinical characteristics of 30 medical workers infected with new coronavirus pneumonia. Zhonghua Jie He He Hu Xi Za Zhi 2020;43:209-14. |
| 6. | Yasri S, Wiwanitkit V. Editorial: Wuhan coronavirus outbreak and imported case. Adv Trop Med Pub Health Int 2020;10:1-2. |
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