Mobile endoscopy teams more efficient, might avoid COVID-19 spread

Last Updated: 2020-04-24

By Reuters Staff

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - On-call endoscopy teams that conduct urgent procedures during off-hours and travel by taxi can use healthcare resources more efficiently during the COVID-19 outbreak, and might also help prevent viral spread, according to a new report from Paris.

"This new organization allows a more optimal deployment of caregivers in other departments. A mobile team reduces the need for patients' transportation at a time when the ambulance system and logistics are saturated. We expect that it also probably reduces the risk of dissemination of the virus," Dr. Marine Camus of Saint Antoine Hospital and colleagues from the Parisian On-Call Endoscopy Team (POET) write in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.

Dr. Camus and her team describe their system in a letter to the editor, written in response to an earlier report (https://bit.ly/3ayEavN) in the journal on infection-control measures for endoscopy departments.

The study authors' hospital system, Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris (APHP), includes 39 hospitals across Paris and its suburbs and 16 endoscopy units.

The equipment is stored and reprocessed at Saint-Antoine Hospital, where POET is based. A senior physician and a paramedic, both with expertise in endoscopy, comprise each of the three on-call teams, the authors explain, and are authorized to conduct urgent procedures in critical-care units of all APHP hospitals.

The POET team travels between hospitals with a foldable cart carrying a 7-kg portable processor, a gastroscope and a 3-kg power source with a foot pedal for electrocoagulation. The teams follow the infection-control precautions and procedures recommended in the earlier report.

Because there is almost no traffic during the quarantine, the authors note, the team can travel quickly between hospitals.

"We believe that this system simplifies how urgent endoscopies are performed at a time of crisis when smart protocols and logistics procedures are critical," they conclude.

SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2KyHWdT Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, online April 16, 2020.