Salmerón Jiménez, MaríaHermoso Alarza, FátimaMartínez Serna, IvanMarrón Fernández, CarmenMeneses Pardo, José CarlosGarcía Salcedo, José AlbertoTorres Serna, AlejandroManama Gama, Mario GustavoColmenares Mendoza, Oscar EnriqueDiaz-Hellín Gude, VicenteGamez García, Antonio Pablo2025-01-072025-01-072020https://hdl.handle.net/10668/25403The goal of this study was to describe the clinical features and outcomes of thoracic surgery patients during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Thirty-five patients were treated at the 12 de Octubre University Hospital in Madrid between 1 March 2020 and 24 April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patient demographics, surgical procedures, complications, COVID-19 symptoms and outcomes were recorded. A protocol was introduced to reduce the risk of operating on patients with COVID-19, including symptom screening, a polymerase chain reaction test for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and computed tomography scans of the chest. Surgical activity changed significantly during this time, from an initial period of near-normal activity, through an emergency-only period and finally a recovery period when some oncological surgical cases were restarted. Selection criteria for surgical patients are also described. A total of 34 patients underwent surgery during the pandemic period. We performed 22 lung resections (11 lobectomies and 11 sublobar resections). No hospital deaths were recorded. An elective surgery patient and an emergency surgery patient were diagnosed with COVID-19 (5.88%). The former died within 30 days after surgery. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 represents a tremendous limitation for thoracic surgical practice. Preoperative practices to exclude asymptomatic cases infected with the virus allowed us to perform thoracic surgical procedures.enAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Coronavirus disease 2019Novel coronavirusOutcomesThoracic surgeryAdultAgedAged, 80 and overBetacoronavirusCOVID-19Clinical ProtocolsCoronavirus InfectionsFemaleHealth Care RationingHumansInfection ControlMaleMiddle AgedOutcome Assessment, Health CarePandemicsPatient SelectionPerioperative CarePneumonia, ViralRetrospective StudiesSARS-CoV-2SpainTertiary Care CentersThoracic Surgical Proceduresresearch article32951033open access10.1093/ejcts/ezaa2871873-734XPMC7543325https://academic.oup.com/ejcts/article-pdf/58/4/738/33886563/ezaa287.pdfhttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7543325/pdf