Recommendations to Manage Patients for Bariatric Surgery in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experience from China
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Recommendations to Manage Patients for Bariatric Surgery in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experience from China Zhiyong Dong 1 & Peng Zhang 2 & Jiangfan Zhu 3 & Jie Bai 4 & Chetan Parmar 5 & Wenhui Chen 1 & Ruixiang Hu 1 & Jianxue Wang 1 & Tsz Hong Chong 1 & Shuwen Jiang 1 & Wah Yang 1 & Lilian Gao 1 & Xiaomei Chen 1 & Jingge Yang 1 & Zefeng Xia 4 & Kaixiong Tao 4 & Cunchuan Wang 1,6 Received: 30 April 2020 / Revised: 22 May 2020 / Accepted: 28 May 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
To the Editor: The novel coronavirus that arose in Wuhan in December 2019 is a new strain of coronavirus [1]. Most coronaviruses cause only mild respiratory illness such as the common cold, but the new virus, named SARS-CoV-2 by the WHO, can cause severe disease, pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome (ARDS), kidney failure, and death [2–5]. Since there is no specific treatment, the goal now is to protect the susceptible population [1–4]. After the first cases were reported in early December in Wuhan [6, 7], the epidemic spread rapidly, but enforced lockdowns and other measures slowed the spread of the disease beyond Wuhan. By May, the number of new cases were as few as 25 per week. Except for Wuhan, most cities in China returned to work gradually, but throughout the rest of the world, the COVID-19 outbreak continued.
Zhiyong Dong, Peng Zhang and Jiangfan Zhu contributed equally to this work. * Cunchuan Wang [email protected] 1
Department of Bariatric Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China
2
Department of General Surgery, Beijing Friendship Hospital, Beijing 100050, China
3
Department of Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery, Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University, 1800 Yuntai Road, Shanghai 200124, China
4
Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
5
Whittington Hospital, London, UK
6
Department of Bariatric Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University, No. 613 Huangpu Avenue West, Guangzhou 510630, China
In our bariatric surgery department, we stopped elective bariatric surgeries in January to prepare for a possible influx of COVID-19 patients. Since our patients are obese and most have significant health comorbidities, it is important that they not be exposed to patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. Bariatric patients also have relatively weak immunity [8, 9]. As the epidemic came under control, we reopened in March and gradually started performing bariatric surgery again. Since bariatric surgery departments in other parts of the world will face the same challenges, we would like to narrate our experiences and give the recommendations of Chinese Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (CSMBS) on how to scientifically and safely conduct bariatric programs under these epidemic conditions. Be aware that the initial inflow of patients for services once you reopen can be enormous because of pent-up demand that has gr
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