Medicine | 2021
Gastroenterologists attitude in various clinical settings in the era of COVID-19 pandemic
Abstract
Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text Abstract Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted our clinical practice. Many gastroenterologists have changed their attitudes toward various gastroenterological clinical settings. The aim of the present study is to explore the gastroenterologist s attitudes in several clinical settings encountered in the clinical practice. An online based survey was completed by 101 of 250 Israeli gastroenterologists (40.5%). Most of the participants were males (76.2%), and most of them were in the age range of 40 to 50 (37.6%). For all questionnaire components, the 2 most common chosen options were “I perform endoscopy with N95 mask, gloves and gown protection in a standard endoscopy room without preendoscopy severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) testing” and “Tend to postpone endoscopy until SARS-CoV-2 test is performed because of fear from being infected, or virus spreading in the endoscopy suite.” Notably, 12 (11.9%) gastroenterologists were infected by Coronavirus disease 2019 during their work. Classifying the clinical settings to either elective and non-elective, most gastroenterologists (77.4%) chose the attitude of “I perform endoscopy with N95 mask, gloves and gown protection in a standard endoscopy room without SARS-COV-2 testing” in the nonelective settings as compared to 54.2% for the elective settings, (P\u200a<\u200a.00001), whereas 32.9% of the responders chose the attitude of “Tend to postpone endoscopy until SARS-COV-2 test is performed because of fear from being infected, or virus spreading in the endoscopy suite” in the elective settings (P\u200a<\u200a.00001). Gastroenterologists’ attitude in various gastroenterological settings was based on the clinical indication. Further studies are needed to assess the long-term consequences of the different attitudes.