Material and Methods
This study was conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki’s principles. The medical ethics committee (Approval No. 22.09.2020/09/09/01) approved this study. We evaluated the Erzincan Mengücek Gazi Training and Research Hospital (EMGTRH), Pathology Department records and determined the patients with a panic diagnosis between January 2018 and January 2021. Patients who had inappropriate contact information in the hospital information processing system were excluded from the study. We reviewed patients’ records and documented demographic, clinical, and panic diagnoses from data. We divided the cases into two groups according to the date of their panic diagnosis. Cases diagnosed before 11 Mach 2020 were included in the pre-COVID group and the cases diagnosed afterward 11 Mach 2020 were included in the COVID pandemic group.
We determined the date of admission to the hospital of the patients after receiving panic diagnosis notification through the hospital system and then compared notification and admission date to determine the patients’ admission to the hospital time.
Patients were divided into two groups according to the median of the patient’s admission time. The applicants within five business days after receiving notification were assigned to a fast group (FG), whereas later application was considered as in slow group (SG). We evaluated the variables (age, gender, the distance of the patient home to hospital, and verbal notification status) that we considered likely to affect the hospital admission time in these groups.
Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 15. Descriptive statistics were presented as mean and standard deviation, median, and distribution width. Comparison of continuous variables between groups was conducted using Student’s t-test and Mann-Whitney U test according to their distribution. Also, a chi-square test was used for risk estimation. The confidence level for statistical significance was defined as 95 percent (α=0.05).
Panic (unexpected) diagnosis lists of our department that determined according to the national pathology societies recommend, were presented in Table 1.