Vikas Kakkar¹, Akriti Sharma²*, Arun Kumar Sharma³, Rohit Bhardwaj⁴ and Ritesh Kumar⁵

¹Department of Otorhinolaryngology, SGT Medical College, Hospital and Research Institute, Village Budhera, Gurugram, Haryana, India

*Corresponding Author: Akriti Sharma, Assistant Professor, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, SGT Medical College, Hospital and Research Institute, Village Budhera, Gurugram, Haryana, India.

Received: September 16, 2021; Published: November 18, 2021

Abstract

Purpose: Main aim of the study was to provide fresh guidelines for triage of patients during the second wave of covid-19 pandemic, along with laying emphasis upon the need for taking stricter precautions by the healthcare staff in diagnosis and management of patients during this time. These revised guidelines and recommendations, drafted specifically for ENT procedures, have been shared by us after taking into account recently published literature on the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic put together with our own experience of managing patients in these unprecedented times.

Methods: The ENT Cochrane, PubMed and Web of Science databases were searched without a time limit using the terms ‘Covid-19 and SARS-CoV-2 in conjunction with ENT surgery and ‘second wave’ in India.

Results: Only absolutely essential and emergent procedures need to be carried out with the use of the highest level of Personal protective equipment comprising of powered air-purifying respirators along with eye protection, fluid resistant gowns and disposable aprons and gloves. As RT-PCR alone cannot be relied upon for diagnosis of covid patients, the diagnosis of covid-19 must be based on a comprehensive evaluation taking clinical and radiological findings into account and every patient must be treated as a covid positive patient unless proved otherwise.

Conclusion: Enhanced level of precautions and revised triage strategies would be of immense help to the ENT surgeon in minimizing the exposure to health care workers and patients during the second wave of the covid-19 pandemic. With an additional burden on the Otolaryngologists due to a sudden rise in cases of Mucormycosis and with increasing mortality amongst doctors, protecting the healthcare staff must be an absolute priority.

Keywords: COVID-19; Second Wave; ENT Surgeon; Triage; Precautions

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Citation

Citation: Akriti Sharma., et al. “Otolaryngology and Covid-19: New Guidelines and Triage for Dealing with the Second Wave". Acta Scientific Otolaryngology 3.12 (2021): 03-07.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Akriti Sharma., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.