You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 70, Issue 9
  • Mandatory preprocedure testing for SARS-CoV-2 for all-comers may not be required for resuming endoscopic services amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Letter
Mandatory preprocedure testing for SARS-CoV-2 for all-comers may not be required for resuming endoscopic services amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
  1. Soumya Jagannath1,
  2. Ashish Agarwal1,
  3. Deepak Gunjan1,
  4. Samir Mohindra2,
  5. Vishal Sharma3,
  6. Sudipta Dhar Chowdhury4,
  7. Sanjeev Sachdeva5,
  8. Vivek A Saraswat6,
  9. Rakesh Kochhar3,
  10. Anoop Saraya1
  11. GAIN Group
    1. 1 Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, Delhi, India
    2. 2 Gastroenterology, SGPGIMS, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
    3. 3 Gastroenterology, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India
    4. 4 Christian Medical College and Hospital Vellore, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India
    5. 5 Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital, New Delhi, Delhi, India
    6. 6 Gastroenterology, Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
    1. Correspondence to Professor Anoop Saraya, Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India; ansaraya{at}yahoo.com

    https://doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2020-323154

    Statistics from Altmetric.com

      Request Permissions

      If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

      We read with interest the study by Hayee et al 1 which reported no COVID-19 infection in healthcare workers (HCWs) or patient after 6208 outpatient GI endoscopic procedures across 18 centres in UK with the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and infection control policies. Only 3 (0.11%) of 2611 asymptomatic patients had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 prior to endoscopy. The study is timely and the results are gratifying given the huge perceived risk of cross-infection among HCWs and patients during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The study favours resumption of outpatient diagnostics during COVID-19 recovery phase without mandatory testing. The risk may, however, vary depending on factors such as infection rate in the population and type of the procedure. We are sharing our experience of transmission of COVID-19 following endoscopy across five academic centres in India, which should strengthen their argument.

      All patients undergoing endoscopic procedures from 1 April 2020 to 31 May 2020 were included in an observational study. A detailed questionnaire was sent to the participating centres for the following information: (1) endoscopy details: type and indications of GI endoscopy and (2) infection control measures: use of PPE, mandatory policy of preprocedure testing for SARS-CoV-2 and disinfection practices. Outcome measure was new SARS-CoV-2 infection in HCWs or patient. The patients were followed up telephonically …

      View Full Text

      Footnotes

      • Collaborators Members of GAIN Group (in alphabetical order)- All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India: Ashish Agarwal, Samagra Agarwal, Vineet Ahuja, Abhinav Anand, Rajat Bansal, Vikas Banyal, Kaushik Chatterjee, Anugrah Dhooria, Anshuman Elhence, Pramod Garg, Srikanth Gopi, Deepak Gunjan, Yegurla Jatin, Vikas Jindal, Bhaskar Kante, Kanav Kaushal, Saurabh Kedia, Soumya Jagannath Mahapatra, Govind Makharia, Srikant Mohta, Sandeep Kumar Mundhra, Piyush Pathak, Shubham Prasad, Mahendra Singh Rajput, Atul Rana, Anoop Saraya, Pabitra Sahu, Rahul Sethia, Shalimar, Sanchit Sharma, Amit Anurag Singh, Manas Vaishnav, Sudheer Kumar Vuyurru. Post Graduate Institute of Medical Educations and Research, Chandigarh, India: Usha Dutta, Rakesh Kochhar, Harshal S Mandavdhare, Gaurav Muktesh, Praveer Rai, Jayanta Samanta, Vishal Sharma, Jayendra Shukla. Christian Medical College, Vellore, India: Kaushik Chatterjee, Sudipta Dhar Chowdhury, Amit Kumar Dutta, John Titus George, Rajeeb Jaleel, Anjilivelil Joseph, Ebby George Simon. Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute, Lucknow, India: Ptaviva Chandra, Samir Mohindra, Vivek Saraswat, Jimil Shah. Gobind Ballabh Pant Hospital, New Delhi, India: Roshan George, Arpan Jain, Anurag Mishra, Sanjeev Sachdeva, Alok Kumar Singh.

      • Contributors SJ, AA, DG, SDC, VS, SS, RK and AS: study design, critical inputs, collection of data and manuscript writing. SM, VS and other members of GAIN study group: collection of data.

      • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

      • Competing interests None declared.

      • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

      • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.