A plea for unification of surgical guidelines in the COVID-19 outbreak

Excerpt

The world is at war against an invisible and insidious enemy. A virus that puts at risk the lives of our patients, our families and also us—surgeons and healthcare workers. Despite the human body and the virus being identical worldwide, recommendations on the use of precautionary measures vary amongst different surgical societies, sometimes within the same country. New research is published almost daily and the peer review process is sometimes sped up to allow for faster publication. The result is that recommendations published a week ago may not be valid today. This article is likely to be out of date by the time it gets published too. Nevertheless, we believe that there is an important message—the method of production of rapid guidelines for the protection of healthcare workers needs to be revised. …