Endoscopy works during the pandemic of coronavirus COVID‐19: recommendations by the Chinese Society of Digestive Endoscopy

Abstract

<jats:p> Since December 2019, a novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, has occurred in China and has spread around the world rapidly. As an acute respiratory infectious disease, COVID-19 has been included in type B infectious diseases and managed according to the standard of type A infectious disease in China. Given the high risk of COVID-19 infection during endoscopic procedures via an airborne route, the Chinese Society of Digestive Endoscopy issued a series of recommendations to guide the endoscopy works in China during the pandemic. To the best of our knowledge, no new infectious case of COVID-19 resulting from endoscopic procedures has been reported in China to date. Here, these recommendations are integrated to provide guidance about the prevention of COVID-19 for endoscopists. The recommendations include advice about postponing non-urgent endoscopies, excluding the possibility of COVID-19 in patients undergoing endoscopy, protection of medical staff from coronavirus infection, and cleaning of endoscopy centres. </jats:p>

Safety in Endoscopy for Patients and Healthcare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Several guidelines and expert advice on performing endoscopy during COVID-19 have been published [11][12][13][14][30][31][32][33] . To ensure that endoscopy is safe for both patients and HCWs, operational reorganization of endoscopy units is necessary during the pandemic 34 (figure 2).…”

“…Medical waste from suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients or high risk cases should be packaged appropriately. Some experts advocate using double medical waste bags clearly marked as COVID-19 waste 31 . These should be handled with care and disposed according to the relevant local regulations 12 .…”

Capsule endoscopy practice during the COVID-19 pandemic: Recommendations from the Capsule Endoscopy Group of the Chinese Society of Digestive Endoscopy

“…In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic 1 , capsule endoscopy (CE) has unique advantages over other gastrointestinal endoscopy modalities 2 3 4 5 , including single use with low risk of cross-infection, excellent tolerance with low risk of aerosol generation, minimal medical staff requirement (one staff member only), and separation of examination and reading/reporting 6 7 . Recent introduction of the noncontact magnetically controlled capsule endoscopy (MCE) system ( Fig.…”

Guidelines for Robotic Flexible Endoscopy at the Time of COVID-19

“…Endoscopic procedures such as bronchoscopy have been shown to be aerosol generating along with several other patient care and operating room procedures ( Mittal et al, 2020 ; Thamboo et al, 2020 ; Wahidi et al, 2020 ). However, for GI endoscopic procedures, no current evidence exists of aerosol generation and advice from respective societies around infection control (IC) is based on expert opinion ( Chai et al, 2020 ; Mahadev et al, 2020 ; Repici et al, 2020 ; Tse et al, 2020 ). A well-designed study is needed to address this knowledge gap in the field that would allow tailored advice for specific endoscopic procedures.…”