The impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on ED visits in Lebanon
The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, ISSN: 0735-6757, Vol: 46, Page: 634-639
2021
- 18Citations
- 158Captures
Metric Options: Counts1 Year3 YearSelecting the 1-year or 3-year option will change the metrics count to percentiles, illustrating how an article or review compares to other articles or reviews within the selected time period in the same journal. Selecting the 1-year option compares the metrics against other articles/reviews that were also published in the same calendar year. Selecting the 3-year option compares the metrics against other articles/reviews that were also published in the same calendar year plus the two years prior.
Example: if you select the 1-year option for an article published in 2019 and a metric category shows 90%, that means that the article or review is performing better than 90% of the other articles/reviews published in that journal in 2019. If you select the 3-year option for the same article published in 2019 and the metric category shows 90%, that means that the article or review is performing better than 90% of the other articles/reviews published in that journal in 2019, 2018 and 2017.
Citation Benchmarking is provided by Scopus and SciVal and is different from the metrics context provided by PlumX Metrics.
Example: if you select the 1-year option for an article published in 2019 and a metric category shows 90%, that means that the article or review is performing better than 90% of the other articles/reviews published in that journal in 2019. If you select the 3-year option for the same article published in 2019 and the metric category shows 90%, that means that the article or review is performing better than 90% of the other articles/reviews published in that journal in 2019, 2018 and 2017.
Citation Benchmarking is provided by Scopus and SciVal and is different from the metrics context provided by PlumX Metrics.
Metrics Details
- Citations18
- Citation Indexes17
- 17
- CrossRef2
- Policy Citations1
- Policy Citation1
- Captures158
- Readers158
- 158
Article Description
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread globally, emergency departments (ED) around the world began to report significant drops in volumes and changes in disease patterns. During the early COVID-19 period, Lebanon followed an aggressive containment approach to halt the spread of the disease. This study aims to examine the impact of the different national containment measures and the early COVID-19 outbreak in Lebanon on ED visit volume and disease spectrum in a single center ED in Lebanon. This study is a secondary analysis of ED visit administrative data, comparing ED visits during the three months period prior to the first identified COVID-19 case in Lebanon with the first 3 months post-COVID-19. A time series analysis of ED visit trends in relation to the major lockdown measures was conducted. Statistical analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, version 27) and STATA version 15 (StataCorp LLC., College Station,TX). Statistical significance was set at 0.05. The daily ED visit volume significantly decreased in response to the closure of educational institutions (19.96% per day, p -value = 0.04) and the declaration of public mobilization state with border closure (97.11% per day, p -value <0.0001). ED visits decreased by 47.2% post-COVID-19. The drop was highest amongst pediatric patients (66.64%). Patients who presented post-COVID-19, compared to pre-COVID-19 were older (40.39 ± 24.96 vs 33.71 ± 24.83, p -value <0.0001), had higher hospital admission rates (28.8% vs. 22.1%, p-value <0.0001), higher critical care admission rates (5.6% vs. 3.5%, p-value <0.001), and double mortality rate (0.4% vs 0.2%, p-value = 0.006). While visits for most diseases dropped, the odds of presenting to the ED post-COVID19 were higher for bacterial infections and non-communicable disease and lower for injuries and communicable diseases. ED visits dropped significantly during the COVID-19 containment period. Understanding the trends of changes in disease entities is important for ED staffing purposes during the pandemic and the varying containment efforts. While stringent lockdown measures were associated with drops in ED visits, understanding the reason behind these drops, specifically whether behavioral or related to true drops in disease prevalence, needs further exploration.
Bibliographic Details
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735675720310962; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajem.2020.11.067; http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85097786674&origin=inward; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33317865; https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0735675720310962; https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajem.2020.11.067
Elsevier BV
Provide Feedback
Have ideas for a new metric? Would you like to see something else here?Let us know