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).