Patients undergoing surgery likely to suffer risks if they previously had COVID

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

Patients going under the knife are more likely to suffer complications if they were infected with Covid, according to new research.

The increased risk lasts for 13 months after surgery - much longer than previously believed, warn scientists.

Currently, NHS hospitals are advised not to perform routine operations within two months of an individual getting the virus.

Despite warnings, the pandemic-fuelled backlog will double by 2024, surgeons say only urgent procedures should be carried out.

The latest findings are based on around 4,000 adults with a history of infection who underwent surgery in the U.S. from March 2020 to December 2021. Time from diagnosis was an average of just over three months.

Lead author Professor Robert Freundlich, of Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville, Tenn., said: "Compared to previous population studies of this issue, ours is distinguished for tracking surgical outcomes more broadly and using a longer time horizon from Covid diagnosis.

"As we were midway through our study, based on postoperative pulmonary outcomes, one medical society issued a recommendation to delay surgery after Covid-19 by up to 12 weeks in more severe cases of Covid.

"Meanwhile, with respect to this range of cardiovascular problems, in our data, we were surprised to find a trend of subsiding risk still discernable more than a year after Covid diagnosis."

When patients undergo any type of surgery after having had Covid, their odds of significant postoperative problems diminish with elapsed time.

The study of electronic health record data found this trend of decreasing risk persists for as long as 13 months after surgery.

It analyzed the odds of various cardiovascular problems within 30 days - including blood and lung clots, heart attacks, acute kidney injury and death.

Incidence dropped steeply at first, from around 18 percent to 10 percent over the first 100 days after Covid diagnosis.

It then proceeded to dwindle steadily for the next 10 months, reaching approximately eight percent after 400 days from Covid diagnosis. The rate of decreasing risk was unaffected by patients' vaccination status.

Freundlich added: "In a given patient’s case, many considerations can influence when surgery should best occur, and our results provide further indication that doctors and patients would do well to include proximity to Covid in their thinking.”

The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.