Repercussions of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Emergency Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at a Referral Hospital in Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Jovina Domingues, S
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Ormonde, M, Miguel, A, Martins, A, Saavedra, I, Silva, MC
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.17/4625
• topic: Emergency Service; COVID-19; Pregnancy; Gynecology; Obstetrics; MAC GIN

Objective. COVID-19 has spread worldwide and Portugal decreed the State of Emergency on March 18th, 2020. During this period, the population was encouraged to stay at home. Still, there were no restrictions on access to health care. Therefore, we aimed to compare the major causes for attending the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Emergency Department (ED) from a referral centre (Maternidade Dr. Alfredo da Costa, in Lisbon). Materials and Methods. Several variables were collected and compared between two periods of time: from 19th March to 2nd April 2020 and the same period of 2019. Results. During the COVID-19 pandemic period, 49.4% fewer patients visited the ED. We observed a higher number of urgent patients and hospitalization rate than previous year. Conclusions. We experienced a reduction number of admissions to the Obstetrics and Gynaecology ED, but apparently the severity of cases that visited the ED increased.