Journal of Education and Health Promotion

Abstract The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‑19) is a serious global pandemic that has extremely affected
health‑care systems. This article aimed to review the perspectives of general surgical practice during
the COVID‑19 pandemic. A systematic review of the literature addressing modification to general
surgical practice during the COVID‑19 pandemic indexed in PubMed, Scopus, Google, and Google
scholar was carried out on June 19–20, 2020. The literature review yielded 577 articles. The exclusion
of duplication, articles not in English, and specialized ones in various surgical disciplines precluded
398 articles. Finally, following checking for relevance and publication status, 114 papers were included.
Recommendations for surgical practice during the COVID‑19 pandemic revolved around mitigation
of the risk of virus transmission to patients and health‑care workers. The emerging themes of safety
precautions were related to patient prioritization and testing, mindful consideration of the operative
strategy, optimum use of personal protective equipment, operative room setup, and departmental
organization. However, those recommendations were often diverging and bore on a dearth of
evidence and personal opinions. Multidisciplinary work and cooperation among surgical specialties
are required to establish and validate the protocols for safe surgical practice during the pandemic
and perhaps similar crises in future. The COVID‑19 pandemic has brought several challenges to
the field of medicine, including the surgical specialty. The centrality of safety precautions emerging
in this crisis requires surgeons to adopt the new roles and work standards and translate them into
practice during the pandemic and perhaps longer.