Surgical activation protocol COVID-19 (SAP COVID).

BACKGROUND

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak have major implications in conventional surgical practice. As the number of patients with this diagnosis is rising, the infection risk for the surgical staff will be higher. Few publications have addressed the surgical management of patients diagnosed with COVID-19.

OBJECTIVE

To assess recommendations for care of patients and surgical team during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHOD

MEDLINE, Embase and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (April 2020) were searched the key words "COVID-19", "PROTOCOL" and "SURGERY". Relevant recommendations, guidelines and cases series were checked for the most accurate information for apply to our center.

RESULTS

We found 379 papers that included the key words. A total of 25 papers were included in the manuscript based in the pertinence of the recommendations. Three major topics were selected: perioperative, intraoperative and postoperative.

CONCLUSION

As an attempt to regulate the surgical team approach, we present recommendations to preserve patients and surgical staff safety with high quality standards of care through reproducible strategies applicable in most hospital centers.