MATERIALS
Local IRB was not solicited for this study because this retrospective
observational study does not fall within the framework of the French law
related to research involving humans (Loi n° 2012-300 du 5 mars 2012).
We studied two periods with 23 working days: from 17 March 2020 to 17
April 2020 and from 18 March 2019 to 18 April 2019. All patients
operated on under general anesthesia during these two periods were
included. There was no exclusion criterion. Data were collected in three
university ENT units located in Paris Area. Center 1 (Pitié-Salpêtrière
Hospital) is an adult general ENT unit, with an otological,
otoneurosurgical, and facial palsy rehabilitation expertise. Center 2
(Tenon Hospital) is an adult general ENT unit, with an oncological
expertise. The third center (Robert Debré Hospital) is a pediatric
general ENT department.
We defined five groups of surgical procedures, according to anatomy:
ear, nose, neck, face, and transoral surgeries. Sub-categories are
presented in Table 1.
We also defined four groups of patients according to etiologies: cancer
(except skin cancer), skin cancer, emergency and functional surgery.
A descriptive analysis of the decline of surgical volume in total and by
type of surgical procedure was carried out between 2019 and 2020. All
analyses and plots were conducted using the R software (v.3.6.0;
2020-04-26).