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Letter
Compliance with UK national guidance for elective surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic
  1. Christina Major1,
  2. Rachel Harwood2,3,
  3. Sanjay Valabh Patel4,
  4. Nigel J Hall1,5
  1. 1 Department of Paediatric Surgery and Urology, Southampton Children's Hospital, Southampton, UK
  2. 2 Paediatric Surgery, Alder Hey Children's NHS Foundation Trust, Liverpool, UK
  3. 3 Cellular and Molecular Physiology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
  4. 4 Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Southampton, UK
  5. 5 University Surgery Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
  1. Correspondence to Christina Major, Department of Paediatric Surgery and Urology, Southampton Children's Hospital, Southampton, UK; christina.major{at}doctors.org.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2020-321445

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    Elective paediatric surgery essentially stopped during the initial COVID-19 lockdown,resulting in significant treatment delays. As of December 2020, 210 000 children were awaiting elective surgery, with 66 000 waiting >6 months.1 To facilitate the safe and efficient recovery of children’s elective surgery, national guidance was developed.2 This child-focussed guidance accounts for lower COVID-19 prevalence in children and inability to isolate children from household contacts, and considers the impact of processes on children and families. This guidance was published in July 2020, endorsed by Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal College of Surgeons of England, adopted by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and revised September 2020 and January 2021, considering rising COVID-19 prevalence and new virus variants.

    National adoption of the guidance was audited with a survey distributed to anaesthetists and surgeons in all 26 UK specialist paediatric surgery centres during October …

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @RachelHarwood10

    • Contributors NJH and SVP conceived the study; CM, NJH and RH designed the audit and collected the data; CM analysed the data; CM, RH, SVP and NJH interpreted the data; CM wrote the draft report, which was critically revised and approved by all authors.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests NJH, SP and RH are part of the steering group that produced and continues to review the National Guidance for the Recovery of Elective Surgery in Children.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.