Shree Krishna Hospital, a 950 bed tertiary care hospital at Karamsad contributed to the world’s largest study pre- surgical vaccination .Two leading cancer and cardiac surgeons of the hospital Dr Raghunandan ,Onco surgeon and Dr Vishal Bhende , Pediatric Cardiac Surgeon and a team of Junior doctors team comprising Dr Hardil Majmudar, Dr Tanishq Sharma , Dr Shivang Amin , Dr Saptak Mankad , Sohilkhan Pathan, Rohit Kumar were part of the largest global study to find the effect of Covid -19 vaccine before surgery to reduce risk of postoperative mortality and morbidity.
The world’s largest ever international study on surgery was conducted by the University of Birmingham and funded by National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) . The sample size of the study was nearly 141,582 globally . It was done with the collaborating efforts of 56 hospitals of India and 1667 hospitals of 116 counties -including Australia, Brazil, China, India, UAE, UK and USA .
The study has revealed that patients waiting for elective surgery should get Covid-19 vaccination before one week to reduce the 30-day morbidity and mortality. Scientists estimate that pre-operative vaccination for elective patients could prevent an additional 58,687 COVID-19-related deaths globally in one year linked to the virus.
The COVID Surgical Collaborative international team of researchers, led by experts at the University of Birmingham, has published its findings on Wednesday in BJS (incorporating the British Journal of Surgery and the European Journal of Surgery), after studying data.
According to the doctors at SKH , “ As we are experiencing our second wave of Covid 19 and have now made vaccines available, it will make sense for surgeons to insist on vaccination for elective surgery patients thus decreasing morbidity and leading to safe surgery.”
Co-lead author Dr Dmitri Nepogodiev, from the University of Birmingham, said “Restarting elective surgery is a global priority. Over 15,000 surgeons and anaesthetists from across 116 countries came together to contribute to this study, making it the largest ever scientific collaboration. It’s crucial that policy makers use the data we have collected to support a safe restart to elective surgery; COVID vaccination should be prioritised for elective surgery patients ahead of the general population.
As per the study , between 0.6% and 1.6% of patients develop COVID-19 infection after elective surgery.For example, whereas patients aged 70 years and over undergoing cancer surgery would usually have a 2.8% mortality rate, this increases to 18.6% if they develop COVID-19 infection. Based on the high risks that surgical patients face, scientists calculate that vaccination of surgical patients is more likely to prevent COVID-19 related deaths than vaccines given to the population at large – particularly among the over-70s and those undergoing surgery for cancer.
This could be particularly important for Low- and Middle-income Countries (LMICs) where mitigation measures such as nasal swab screening and COVID-free surgical pathways, which can reduce the risk of complications related to the virus, are unlikely to be universally implemented. Vaccination is also likely to decrease post-operative pulmonary complications – reducing intensive care use and overall healthcare costs.
