Introduction
Pathology reports are a crucial medical document that contains critical
information about diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. Although all
pathology reports contain important information, some of them contain
critical information about life-threatening changes that need immediate
treatment.1 These diagnoses are considered panic
diagnoses in surgical pathology.2 Failure to follow up
on the results of these reports or lack of appropriate communication of
these reports results may lead to a delay in diagnosis that may cause
severe or irreparable harm and may affect the patient
outcome.3 To ensure patient safety and prevent this
delay, national pathology societies recommend that each pathology
department should identify potential panic (unexpected) diagnosis lists
and draw up a communication policy.2
The College of American Pathologists (CAP) evaluates panic (unexpected)
diagnoses under Urgent Diagnoses and Significant, Unexpected Diagnoses
titles. CAP defines urgent diagnoses as an important or life-threatening
medical condition that requires urgent intervention and recommends that
direct verbal communication occurs on the day of diagnosis. They also
define Significant, Unexpected Diagnoses as a clinically unusual or
unpredictable medical condition that needs to be addressed at some point
in the patient’s course and recommends that communication occurs as soon
as possible.2 The Federation of Turkish pathology
society considers Urgent, Significant, and unexpected diagnoses under a
single title as a panic diagnosis.
Several studies indicated that immediately effective verbal
communication had a beneficial impact on patient’s outcome and treatment
management.4,5 Although communication between the
clinician and the pathologist is established in a brief time, in some
cases, reaching the patient may take longer. In the case of patients
with an unexpected malignancy, prolonged hospital admission time may
result in delayed treatment and worsening of prognosis.
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) that
causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), first appeared in Wuhan
(China) and the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly around the
world.6-8 The first case in Turkey was recorded on 11
March and following this many hospitals have been turned into the
COVID-19 pandemic hospitals and elective surgical procedures and
non-critical health care services are limited. The lockdown has also
made it difficult for patients to access healthcare services for non-
COVID-19 conditions in addition to healthcare limitations. Many studies
revealed that hospital admission for acute medical illnesses, including
stroke and acute myocardial infarction, fell dramatically with the onset
of the COVID-19 pandemic.9-11
In this study, we aimed to determine the duration of hospital admission
of the patients with panic diagnosis pre-COVID-19 and during the
COVID-19 pandemic, to examine the factors that may influence hospital
admission time, and to identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on
hospital admission time.