In a new study from the University of Birmingham, researchers found that patients waiting for elective surgery should get COVID-19 vaccines ahead of the general population—potentially helping to avoid thousands of post-operative deaths linked to the virus.
Between 0.6% and 1.6% of patients develop COVID-19 infection after elective surgery. Patients who develop COVID-19 infection are at between 4- and 8-fold increased risk of death in the 30 days following surgery.
For example, whereas patients aged 70 years and over undergoing cancer surgery would usually have a 2.8% mortality rate, this increases to 18.6% if they develop COVID-19 infection.
In the study, the team analyzed data for 141,582 patients from across 1,667 hospitals in 116 countries, including Australia, Brazil, China, India, UAE, UK and U.S.
They found that vaccination of surgical patients is more likely to prevent COVID-19 related deaths than vaccines given to the population at large—particularly among the over-70s and those undergoing surgery for cancer.
For example, whereas 1,840 people aged 70 years and over in the general population need to be vaccinated to save one life over one year, this figure is only 351 in patients aged 70 years and over having cancer surgery.
Overall, the scientists estimated that global prioritization of pre-operative vaccination for elective patients could prevent an additional 58,687 COVID-19-related deaths in one year.
The team says preoperative vaccination could support a safe re-start of elective surgery by significantly reducing the risk of COVID-19 complications in patients and preventing tens of thousands of COVID-19-related post-operative deaths.
It’s crucial that policymakers use the data of the study to support a safe restart to elective surgery; COVID vaccination should be prioritized for elective surgery patients ahead of the general population.
If you care about the COVID-19 vaccine, please read studies about what heart and stroke patients should know about COVID-19 vaccines and findings of why older people must go to the front of the COVID-19 vaccine line.
For more information about the COVID-19 vaccine and your health, please see recent studies about why it takes 2 shots to make COVID-19 mRNA vaccines do their antibody-creating best and results showing that Americans have unrealistic expectations for a COVID-19 vaccine.
The study is published in the British Journal of Surgery. One author of the study is Aneel Bhangu.
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