Gastroenterologists attitude in various clinical settings in the era of COVID-19 pandemic: An online Uni-National Israeli Survey.

ABSTRACT: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted our clinical practice. Many gastroenterologists have changed their attitudes toward various gastroenterological clinical settings. The aim of the present study is to explore the gastroenterologist's attitudes in several clinical settings encountered in the clinical practice.An online based survey was completed by 101 of 250 Israeli gastroenterologists (40.5%).Most of the participants were males (76.2%), and most of them were in the age range of 40 to 50 (37.6%). For all questionnaire components, the 2 most common chosen options were "I perform endoscopy with N95 mask, gloves and gown protection in a standard endoscopy room without preendoscopy severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) testing" and "Tend to postpone endoscopy until SARS-CoV-2 test is performed because of fear from being infected, or virus spreading in the endoscopy suite." Notably, 12 (11.9%) gastroenterologists were infected by Coronavirus disease 2019 during their work. Classifying the clinical settings to either elective and non-elective, most gastroenterologists (77.4%) chose the attitude of "I perform endoscopy with N95 mask, gloves and gown protection in a standard endoscopy room without SARS-COV-2 testing" in the nonelective settings as compared to 54.2% for the elective settings, (P < .00001), whereas 32.9% of the responders chose the attitude of "Tend to postpone endoscopy until SARS-COV-2 test is performed because of fear from being infected, or virus spreading in the endoscopy suite" in the elective settings (P < .00001).Gastroenterologists' attitude in various gastroenterological settings was based on the clinical indication. Further studies are needed to assess the long-term consequences of the different attitudes.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is associated with COVID-19 severity independently of metabolic syndrome: a retrospective case-control study.

AIM: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a recently encountered disease that was declared a pandemic by WHO in 2020. Obesity and other components of the metabolic syndrome may aggravate the severity of COVID-19. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) represents the hepatic manifestation of metabolic syndrome. The aim of this study was to investigate a possible association between MAFLD and COVID-19 severity. METHODS: We performed a retrospective, case-control study, enrolling 71 consecutive COVID-19 patients who were divided into two groups according to the presence or absence of fatty liver by computed tomography scan. All medical records of eligible patients were reviewed including demographic, clinical, laboratory parameters and data regarding the presence of NAFLD and COVID-19 severity. RESULTS: NAFLD was identified in 22/71 (31%) of the study group. Out of 71, thirteen suffered from severe COVID-19. NAFLD patients had more severe COVID-19 compared with non-NAFLD subjects, 8/22 (36.3%) vs. 5/49(10.2%), (P < 0.005), respectively. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that NAFLD subjects were more likely to have severe COVID-19 disease (odds ratio 3.57, 95% confidence interval: 1.22, 14.48, P = 0.0031). CONCLUSION: NAFLD represents a high risk for severe COVID-19 irrespective to gender, and independent of metabolic syndrome specifically in male gender. Moreover, obesity, hypertension and metabolic syndrome were also significantly associated with severe COVID-19.