Kottaisamy Ramasubramaniam, Aggarwal Manish Kumar, Goyal Rajiv
Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Center, Delhi, India.
Lung India. 2022 Mar-Apr;39(2):152-157. doi: 10.4103/lungindia.lungindia_94_21.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented crisis, affecting every sphere of human life. A major challenge for health care workers (HCWs) is to care for patients with a highly contagious airborne disease, while making sure of their own safety. Interventional pulmonology (IP) procedures, like bronchoscopy, are particularly risky due to significant aerosol generation. Guidelines by several scientific bodies were framed on the precautions to be taken while performing IP procedures. We evaluated the IP procedures performed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether the precautions adopted proved adequate in preventing transmission amongst the HCWs involved in these procedures.
We performed a retrospective analysis of all patients who underwent IP procedures between March 2020 and November 2020, at a tertiary cancer hospital. We also evaluated the proportion of HCWs, who were involved in these procedures, and were affected by COVID-19, through their health care records.
We performed a total of 506 IP procedures. Two of the 18 HCWs, working in that unit, suffered from COVID-19 and recovered after a mild illness. Three HCWs were isolated with suspected infection but proved to be negative. The procedures in our IP unit were uninterrupted for the entire duration of the study period.
IP procedures can be safely performed even in the presence of a highly contagious viral pandemic with adequate precautions.
2019冠状病毒病疫情造成了一场前所未有的危机，影响着人类生活的方方面面。医护人员面临的一项重大挑战是，在确保自身安全的同时，照顾患有高传染性空气传播疾病的患者。诸如支气管镜检查等介入性肺病（IP）操作，由于会产生大量气溶胶，风险尤其高。多个科学机构制定了在进行IP操作时应采取的预防措施指南。我们评估了在2019冠状病毒病疫情期间进行的IP操作，以及所采取的预防措施在防止参与这些操作的医护人员之间传播方面是否足够。
我们对2020年3月至2020年11月期间在一家三级癌症医院接受IP操作的所有患者进行了回顾性分析。我们还通过医护人员的医疗记录，评估了参与这些操作且感染2019冠状病毒病的医护人员比例。
我们总共进行了506例IP操作。在该科室工作的18名医护人员中有2人感染了2019冠状病毒病，轻症后康复。3名医护人员因疑似感染被隔离，但检测结果为阴性。在整个研究期间，我们IP科室的操作没有中断。
即使在存在高传染性病毒疫情的情况下，采取适当的预防措施，也可以安全地进行IP操作。
