Recommendations for developing clinical care protocols during pandemics: From theory and practice

In 2019, a novel coronavirus called the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 led to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019, which was deemed a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020. Owing to the accelerated rate of mortality and utilization of hospital resources, health care systems had to adapt to these major changes. This affected patient care across all disciplines and specifically within the perioperative services. In this review, we discuss the strategies and pitfalls of how perioperative services in a large academic medical center responded to the initial onset of a pandemic, adjustments made to airway management and anesthesia specialty services – including critical care medicine, obstetric anesthesiology, and cardiac anesthesiology - and strategies for reopening surgical caseload during the pandemic.