Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on urological practice in emergency departments in Italy

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) and the disease it causes, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), are causing a rapid and tragic health emergency worldwide [1,2]. Italy was the first European country to experience a virus outbreak, starting on 21 February 2020. It resulted in a national quarantine, and the official lockdown of the country’s non-essential businesses and services began on 9 March 2020. Although several reports are available in the literature providing recommendations for the reorganization of clinical and surgical activities [3–7], to our knowledge, no data are available on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the outcomes of other medical conditions. For this reason, we aimed to evaluate the urological component of emergency department activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, assessing the requests for urgent urological consultations in a network of academic and nonacademic hospitals in Italy.