Publication date: May 19, 2026
The effect of COVID-19 lockdown periods on surgical admission patterns in the Australian healthcare system has been relatively unexplored. The impact of these lockdowns was investigated via analysis of a surgical mortality dataset. All cases that had completed the evaluation process by 4 March 2025 (patient death between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2024, n = 28 685) were included. The ANZASM database captures deaths during surgical admissions, not all surgical admissions. Data from NSW were unavailable at the time of extraction. Cases were grouped into three cohorts, according to date of patient death: pre-COVID (2017-2019), COVID (2020-2021) and post-COVID (2022-2024). Demographics were consistent across cohorts, with minor differences between pre- and post-COVID for age (p
| Concepts | Keywords |
|---|---|
| Australian | ANZASM |
| December | COVID‐19 |
| Healthcare | mortality |
| Pandemic | surgery |
Semantics
| Type | Source | Name |
|---|---|---|
| disease | MESH | COVID-19 Pandemic |
| disease | MESH | death |
| disease | MESH | included |