Determining coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) community incidence threshold for preoperative testing

Abstract

Pre-procedural testing for SARS-CoV-2 is frequently used to reduce perioperative morbidity and mortality during the pandemic. Such testing is resource intensive, and the relative benefits depend on local epidemiology. We propose a threshold of 20/100,000 unlinked cases to activate such testing to optimize the yield and positive predictive value.