Traumatic paediatric neurosurgical emergencies during the COVID-19 pandemic: experience in a single regional paediatric
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Traumatic paediatric neurosurgical emergencies during the COVID-19 pandemic: experience in a single regional paediatric major trauma centre Amin Andalib 1 & Matthew I Sanders 1 & Saurabh Sinha 1 Received: 28 August 2020 / Accepted: 22 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Dear Editor: The novel coronavirus (COVID-19), first described in December 2019 in the Wuhan province of China, has created an unprecedented global health crisis. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared this a pandemic and a global public health emergency. Countries around the globe have come forward with a variety of public health measures, including prohibiting social gatherings as well as closing educational institutions and public places. Moreover, the introduction of widespread “lockdowns” has been seen internationally, with bans on nonessential travel and encouraging new forms of routine, including working from home. The UK government implemented its own nationwide lockdown on 23 March 2020. Since the beginning of the UK lockdown, there has been increasing concern about an upsurge in non-accidental injuries (NAI) in children [1, 2]. We read with interest the work by Dyson et al. on the incidence of children referred to their institution with suspected NAI during the initial period of lockdown in late March to June of this year [3]. As a regional paediatric major trauma centre (MTC), we questioned whether the published experience of colleagues in a non-MTC was different to our own. We present a retrospective observational study of all emergency neurosurgical admissions to Sheffield Children’s Hospital, a regional paediatric MTC, during the period of lockdown. We also collected retrospective data of a matched control period from the previous year for comparison. Data were included from all admissions under neurosurgery at Sheffield Children’s Hospital from the start of the UK lockdown on 23 March 2020 until 30 June 2020 (“during
* Amin Andalib [email protected] 1
Department of Neurosurgery, Sheffield Children’s Hospital, Sheffield, UK
COVID-19 group”). Corresponding data were retrospectively collected from the same period in 2019 for comparison (“preCOVID-19 group”). An unpaired t test was used to compare mean age between each group. The chi-squared test was used to compare admissions between groups, specifically the number of patients admitted with trauma, as well as NAI as a proportion of total admissions (both traumatic and non-traumatic). Data were analysed using Microsoft Excel. The total number of patients admitted to neurosurgery both pre- and during COVID-19 were similar across each period, with 34 (17M:17F) and 33 (20M:13F) patients admitted, respectively. Mean (± SD) ages of patients in the pre-COVID19 and during COVID-19 groups were 5.41 (± 3.48) and 4.72 (± 3.76) years, respectively. There was no statistical difference between gender (p = 0.39) or age (p = 0.44). Breakdown of admissions are summarised in Table 1. There was an increase in patients admitted w
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