Guerios Simone D, Clemmer Gina, Levy Julie K
Department of Small Animal Clinical Science, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States.
Clinic HQ, Portland, OR, United States.
Front Vet Sci. 2025 Mar 21;12:1558235. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1558235. eCollection 2025.
The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in early 2020 resulted in a temporary suspension of elective spay and neuter procedures in many low-cost spay/neuter clinics. In our previous study, we projected a deficit of 2.7 million surgeries performed in high-quality high-volume spay-neuter (HQHVSN) clinics as a result of the shutdown and subsequent inability to recover to pre-pandemic productivity by the end of 2021. The purpose of this follow-up study was to determine whether the clinics subsequently recovered and caught up with the previously delayed procedures. Spay-neuter data were collected from 212 HQHVSN clinics from January 2019 through June 2023. The clinics collectively performed 1,217,240 spay/neuter surgeries in the pre-COVID baseline year of 2019. The pandemic triggered a reduction of 13% in 2020, 3% in 2021, 6% in 2022, and 1% in the first half of 2023. Analysis of patient data from the same clinics in our previous report revealed that instead of rebounding to pre-pandemic surgery capacity, they performed even fewer surgeries per quarter in the 18-month follow-up period than they did in 2021. If similar trends occurred in the estimated 3,000 spay-neuter clinics across the United States, the deficit in spay-neuter surgeries is estimated to have risen to 3.7 million surgeries, not including the compounding effect of those intact animals producing litters of their own. The continued decline in low-cost spay-neuter year over year impedes access to basic preventive pet healthcare and threatens to undermine decades of progress in controlling pet overpopulation.
2020年初的新冠疫情封锁导致许多低成本绝育诊所暂时停止了选择性绝育手术。在我们之前的研究中，我们预计，由于诊所关闭以及随后在2021年底前无法恢复到大流行前的生产力，高质量大容量绝育（HQHVSN）诊所将少做270万例手术。这项后续研究的目的是确定这些诊所随后是否恢复并补上了之前推迟的手术。收集了2019年1月至2023年6月期间212家HQHVSN诊所的绝育数据。在2019年新冠疫情前的基准年，这些诊所共进行了1217240例绝育手术。疫情导致2020年减少了13%，2021年减少了3%，2022年减少了6%，2023年上半年减少了1%。对我们之前报告中相同诊所的患者数据进行分析后发现，在18个月的随访期内，这些诊所每季度进行的手术数量不仅没有反弹到大流行前的手术量，反而比2021年还要少。如果美国估计的3000家绝育诊所也出现类似趋势，那么绝育手术的缺口估计已升至370万例，这还不包括那些未绝育动物自行繁殖所产生的复合影响。低成本绝育手术年复一年地持续下降，阻碍了人们获得基本的预防性宠物医疗服务，并有可能破坏几十年来在控制宠物数量过剩方面取得的进展。
