Background

Objective: To determine the effect of decreased surgical volume during the COVID-19 pandemic on bariatric perioperative complications. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted surgical volumes for elective surgeries, including those in bariatric surgery. Previous studies suggest greater surgical volumes are associated with lower rates of perioperative complications. We evaluated the impact of decreased surgical volume on bariatric perioperative complications during COVID.

Methods

We retrospectively compared bariatric perioperative complications for patients who underwent surgery pre-COVID (3/2019-3/2020) to patients who underwent surgery during-COVID (3/2020-3/2021). The primary outcome was number of perioperative complications during the study period. With MBSAQIP database 90-day surgical follow-up data, an independent sample T-test was performed to compare the rates of perioperative complications between the cohorts.

Results

During the study period, there were 305 patients who underwent surgery pre-COVID and 198 who underwent surgery during-COVID. There was a greater average number of patients with diabetes mellitus and preoperative venous thrombosis requiring therapy pre-COVID than during-COVID (p=0.008, p=0.007, respectively). During-COVID patients had a significantly greater average BMI (49.0 versus 46.7; p=0.007). Unplanned admissions to the ICU in the pre-COVID group were significantly greater (0.02 versus 0.00; p=0.029). Other measured perioperative complications compared (n=7/8; 87.5%) showed no significant differences.

Conclusions

Contrary to previous findings, our study shows a decreased perioperative complication rate despite decreased surgical volume.