Postoperative Complications in Patients With the Preoperative COVID-19 Infection at King Fahad Specialist Hospital: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Background: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a new coronavirus strain. Indeed, the timing of COVID-19 infection before surgery plays an important role in the surgery outcomes and complications.Objective: In this study, we aimed to assess the prevalence and predictors of postoperative complications for patients who underwent surgery with previous COVID-19 infection.Methodology: This was a retrospective hospital-based study which was conducted on 75 patients who had been infected with COVID-19 and underwent surgery.Results: We included 75 patients. The time between COVID-19 infection and the surgery was from one to six months in 52% of patients, 24% of patients were more than six months, and 24% of patients were less than one month. In this study, most of the patients had no complications (77.3%) while 22.7% of patients had complications that were mainly respiratory (n= 13). The overall mortality in our study was 5.3%. There was a significant association between comorbidity and postoperative complications, and the status of COVID-19 preoperative and postoperative complications (p < 0.01) but not patients' age as well as the type of anesthesia and postoperative complication (p > 0.05).Conclusion: Respiratory complications were the most common postoperative complications in patients who had surgery after COVID-19 infection. Comorbidity and COVID-19 status were significantly associated with higher postoperative complications. Mortality was relatively small. We recommend extreme care to patients with COVID-19 infection prior to surgery to decrease the COVID-19 hazards that develop post-surgery.