Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic and Pattern of Patient Care in Otorhinolaryngology Practice in a Tertiary Referral Centre

To study the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on patient load in a tertiary care centre and the innovations and methods used to improve the safety of the healthcare workers, to provide adequate treatment in the department of Otorhinolaryngology. This study was conducted in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, at a tertiary care hospital centre in North-East India. This study included data collected from the patient registers maintained in our department, and included data over a 4-month period, from April, 2020 to July, 2020. Age, gender, place of residence, clinical diagnosis and the operative procedure performed were included in the data profile for analysis. The above-mentioned registers were also reviewed to retrieve details about the rate of admission during the study period in the previous year. Data was collected and represented, in both descriptive and tabular forms, after proper statistical analysis. We found out that there is a drastic reduction in number of patients attending in our department of Otorhinolaryngology during this COVID-19 pandemic. Certain innovative methods for protecting healthcare workers from viral transmission were put into our practice based on the peer reviewed articles, from June, 2020 and the rate of elective procedures and in-patient admissions were thus increased. Knowledge of new innovative methods in Otorhinolaryngology will help overcome the difficulties faced during the current COVID-19 pandemic.