[Safe surgery and COVID-19: A narrative review].

BACKGROUND

The interruption of surgical care in Spain caused by the pandemic must end. Recovery from this activity must be carried out on an elective basis and in conjunction with possible cases of COVID-19. The objective of this review was to incorporate good practice criteria related to COVID-19 into the context of safe surgery, which would make it possible to develop a proposed surgical safety checklist adapted to patients with this disease.

METHODS

Narrative literature review, following the PRISMA protocol, in the Medline and Cochrane directories, using the MeSH terms (coronavirus, infections, safety, surgical procedures, operative, checklist) and the Boolean operator AND. In addition, recommendations from scientific bodies and societies were reviewed (grey literature).

RESULTS

Thirty-three final studies were included with recommendations for safe surgery and surgical safety checklist adapted for COVID-19, the most frequent being aspects related to treatment (41.3%) and prevention and control measures (27.6%).

CONCLUSIONS

The existence of a broad consensus on good practices recommended for COVID surgical patients makes it possible to make a proposal for surgical safety checklist to these patients.