Ophthalmology, Department of Surgical, Medical, Molecular Pathology and of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
Emergency Department, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Pisana (AOUP), Pisa, Italy.
PLoS One. 2020 Oct 1;15(10):e0239796. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239796. eCollection 2020.
Since the end of 2019, an outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), originating in the Chinese city of Wuhan has spread rapidly worldwide causing thousands of deaths. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is supported by SARS-CoV-2 and represents the causative agent of a potentially fatal disease that is of great global public health concern. Italy has been the first European country recording an elevated number of infected forcing the Italian Government to call for total lockdown. The lockdown had the aim to limit the spread of infection through social distancing. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the pandemic has affected the patient's accesses to the Ophthalmological Emergency Department of a tertiary referral center in central-northern Italy, during the lockdown period. The charts of all patients that came to the Emergency Department during the lockdown period (March 10 -May 4, 2020) have been retrospectively collected and compared with those in the same period of 2019 and the period from 15 January- 9 March 2020. A significant reduction of visits during the lockdown has been observed, compared with those of pre-lockdown period (reduction of 65.4%) and with those of the same period of 2019 (reduction of 74.3%). Particularly, during the lockdown, minor and not urgency visits decreased whereas the undeferrable urgency ones increased. These pieces of evidence could be explained by the fear of patients to be infected; but also revealed patients misuse of emergency services.
自 2019 年底以来，一种源自中国武汉市的严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒 2（SARS-CoV-2）的爆发迅速在全球范围内蔓延，导致数千人死亡。冠状病毒病（COVID-19）由 SARS-CoV-2 支持，代表着一种潜在致命疾病的病原体，这对全球公共卫生构成了巨大关注。意大利是第一个记录到大量感染病例的欧洲国家，迫使意大利政府呼吁全面封锁。封锁旨在通过社会隔离来限制感染的传播。本研究旨在分析大流行如何影响意大利中北部一家三级转诊中心的眼科急诊患者在封锁期间的就诊情况。回顾性收集了封锁期间（2020 年 3 月 10 日至 5 月 4 日）来急诊就诊的所有患者的图表，并与 2019 年同期和 2020 年 1 月 15 日至 3 月 9 日期间进行了比较。与封锁前时期（减少 65.4%）和 2019 年同期（减少 74.3%）相比，封锁期间的就诊次数明显减少。特别是在封锁期间，轻微和非紧急就诊减少，而不可推迟的紧急就诊增加。这些证据可能是由于患者担心感染；但也揭示了患者对急诊服务的滥用。
