No abstract

BackgroundAs the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic started, some restrictions were imposed throughout the country. The pandemic caused disruption, reduction, and even a halt in health services worldwide. During this period, the number of procedures performed in surgical clinics decreased due to the interruption of services and the restriction in patient admissions. MethodologyIn this study, we aimed to evaluate the effect of the pandemic on the number of surgeries performed in our clinic during the pre-and post-pandemic period by evaluating the following elective surgeries conducted between September 2018 and September 2021: upper gastrointestinal system, abdominal wall hernia, gallbladder surgeries, and kidney transplantation. ResultsA significant decrease was observed in the number of operations before and after the pandemic in our clinic. ConclusionsIn our opinion, both the Ministry of Health and healthcare institutions should increase the necessary precautions, organize the planning and programming in hospitals, and increase efforts in protecting healthcare workers and patients by increasing surgical practices and ensuring that the healthcare services we provide reach the numbers noted during the pre-pandemic period.

Objective The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of nutritional status and sarcopenia on survival in gastric cancer (GC) patients. Research Methods: This prospective study was conducted with 150 GC patients at the oncology outpatient clinic. Malnutrition and sarcopenia status were determined according to The Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) and anthropometric measurements. Survival analyses were conducted using Kaplan–Meier method and Cox-regression analysis. Results The mean age was 60.1 ± 11.4, and 64% (n = 96) were male, 36% were female (n = 54) patients. Severe malnutrition was observed in 63.3% (n = 95) of patients. In univariate analysis, the mean survival time (ST) for patients with a PG-SGA score < 9 point was 76.3 ± 7.4 month (95% CI:61.7–90.9), for patients with PG-SGA score ≥ 9 was 35.8 ± 4.1 month (95% CI:27.8–43.7) (p < 0.001). The mean ST for patients with and without sarcopenia was 32.0 ± 7.3 month (95% CI:17.7–46.3), 54.1 ± 4.8 month (95% CI:44.7–63.6) respectively (p < 0.05). In multivariate analysis, the risk of death in the patients who didn’t undergo gastrectomy [HR = 1.9 (95% CI:1.2–2.9)], malnourished [HR = 2.3 (95% CI:1.5–3.5)], had metastases [HR = 2.4 (95% Cl:1.4-4.0)] was higher. With the adjustment there was no association between the survival and sarcopenia (p > 0,05). Conclusions Malnutrition was identified as one of the independent risk factors for survival in GC patients, similar to the presence of metastases and the absence of gastrectomy. GC patients should be followed carefully in terms of these issues and nutritional interventions should be made when necessary.

No abstract

No abstract