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Influence Of Full Lockdown On Patients’ Attendance In The Emergency Surgical Specialties Department Of A Tertiary Hospital In Athens, Greece; Preliminary Results Amid Covid-19 Outbreak

Aims A full lockdown was forced in Greece due to the COVID-19 pandemic for 53 days and specifically from 03/13/2020 to05/04/2020. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of lockdown on the number of patients visiting theEmergency Surgical Specialties Department (ESSD) of a tertiary Greek hospital. It is common sense that the vast majority of patients examined in the ESSD have no symptoms related to SARS-CoV-2. In the Emergency Department (ED) of ourhospital, there are 6 different surgical specialties domains;Vascular Surgery, Thoracic Surgery, Urology, Opthalmology, General Surgery, and Otorhinolaryngology. Methods In this retrospective study, data exported from the Sismanogleio General Hospital's Emergency Department werestudied during 4 different periods;a) the full lockdown period of 53 days, from 03/13/2020 to 05/04/2020, b) the period of53 days right before the lockdown, from 01/20/2020 to 03/12/2020, c) the period of 53 days right after the lockdown, from05/05/2020 to 06/26/2020 and d) the time period of the previous year that is analogous with the lockdown duration, from03/13/2019 to 05/04/2019. Results The number of patients visiting the ESSD of our hospital was significantly altered during the lockdown period([ Tab. 1 ]). The reduction of this number is remarkable compared to the rest time periods of the study. To be exact, thisdecrease is 54.74 %, 51.53 %, and 61.93 % compared to the pre-traffic ban duration, the post-ban span, and the previousyear's similar time period. Conclusions Data provided by our ED is congruent with many other reports all over the world showing a dramaticlessening of people attending the ESSD amid the outbreak of COVID-19. People's angst about contracting the disease wasundoubtedly the most obvious reason for that.