Endoscopy volumes and outcomes at a tertiary Melbourne centre during the 2020 COVID‐19 lockdowns

Abstract

We undertook a retrospective analysis of endoscopic procedures at Monash Health during the 2020 lockdowns (24 March – 1 May, 2 August – 28 September 2020) and the corresponding periods in 2019. All patients underwent preprocedure COVID19 screening (health questionnaire, polymerase chain reaction testing). We collected information on patient demographic characteristics, procedure type, COVID19 status, and endoscopic outcomes (cancer and polyp detection). We assessed differences in procedure volumes and rates during the 2019 and 2020 periods in χ2 tests; P < 0.05 was deemed statistically significant. The overall missing cancer number was estimated as the difference between the expected number of cancers (based on procedure volume and detection rate for 2019) and the number of cancers identified during the 2020 lockdowns.1 Our study was approved by the Monash Health Human Research Ethics Committee (QA/68490/MonH2020232763).