Introduction:

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was a challenge for health authorities, both for health care systems, hospitals and health professionals.

Objective:

To describe emergency surgery in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Material and methods:

Retrospective, descriptive, observational study of patients with surgical pathologies in the Emergency Department from August to November 2020.

Results:

In 385 patients, with an average age of 50 years, the most frequent reason for consultation was pain in the epigastrium (21.3%), followed by yellowing of the skin and mucous membranes (18.7%) and rectal bleeding (16.8%). The evolution time averages 3 days.

A total of 151 (39%) surgical interventions were performed, of which the most frequent were cholecystectomy (46.3%) and appendectomy (18.5%), 11 percutaneous treatments (2.8%) and 24 (6.2%) endoscopic treatments; 199 (51.7%) patients were treated conservatively. Among the post-surgical complications, surgical site infection was most frequently found in 38.4% and intra-abdominal collection in 37%. Of all patients received and admitted to the service, 32 (8.31%) were COVID-19 positive and during their hospital stay, 4 (12.5%) presented complications that included postoperative hemorrhage in two patients, mesenteric ischemia on one occasion and septic shock at pulmonary baseline. We had 1.2% of deaths.

Conclusions:

The average age of the patients was 50 years.

The most frequent reason for consultation was epigastrium pain.

Cholecystectomy was the most common surgery and the most common complication was surgical site infection.

1.2% deaths were recorded.

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