Copyright
©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Transplant. Aug 18, 2022; 12(8): 250-258
Published online Aug 18, 2022. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v12.i8.250
Published online Aug 18, 2022. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v12.i8.250
Emergency department visits and hospital admissions in kidney transplant recipients during the COVID-19 pandemic: A hospital-based study
Wachira Wongtanasarasin, Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand
Wachira Wongtanasarasin, Department of Emergency Medicine, UC Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA 95817, United States
Phichayut Phinyo, Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand
Phichayut Phinyo, Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Clinical Statistics, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand
Author contributions: Wongtanasarasin W and Phinyo P designed the protocol, contributed to data collection, and data analyses; Wongtanasarasin W contributed to the formal analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript; and all authors read and critically reviewed the final version of the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University (EXEMPTION-8745/65).
Informed consent statement: The Institutional Review Board of the Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University waived informed consent due to its retrospective design.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE-Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE-Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Wachira Wongtanasarasin, MD, Attending Doctor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, 110 Intavarorot Street, Sriphum, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand. wachir_w@hotmail.com
Received: January 28, 2022
Peer-review started: January 28, 2022
First decision: March 25, 2022
Revised: March 27, 2022
Accepted: July 25, 2022
Article in press: July 25, 2022
Published online: August 18, 2022
Peer-review started: January 28, 2022
First decision: March 25, 2022
Revised: March 27, 2022
Accepted: July 25, 2022
Article in press: July 25, 2022
Published online: August 18, 2022
Core Tip
Core Tip: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) affects kidney transplant (KT) recipients in terms of hospital admission rates. This study showed that despite emergency department (ED) visits remaining unchanged during the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital admission rates increased. Although we could not establish the cause-effect relationship of these changes, we encourage healthcare providers to provide post-KT patients recommendations to visit ED promptly for acute health conditions.