COVID-19 impact on emergency department trauma visits in Eastern Province Saudi Arabia-2020: A cross- sectional descriptive study

ABSTRACT

Background:The new pandemic, COVID-19, is posing an enormous threat to people and huge workload to emergency departments (EDs) worldwide. Purpose: To study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on preventing trauma patients from visiting Emergency departments. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted using an electronic survey, all the patients who live in the eastern province and had to visit the Emergency departments and either delayed or decided not to visit ED due to COVID-19 pandemic were targeted. Results: A total of 390 out of 809 respondents (48%) in the Eastern region suffered from an orthopedic injury during lockdown due to covid-19 pandemic. A total of 244 (62.6%) respondents were afraid to visit hospital during lockdown. The main reasons for that were being afraid of being infected with covid-19. Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in preventing orthopedic trauma patients from visiting emergency departments which delayed them from receiving proper management.