Elective surgery without covid-19 testing will lead to excess morbidity and mortality: Patients should be tested for covid-19 prior to planned operations to prevent avoidable surgical complications and mortality

Countless surgical procedures have been canceled worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As surgical volumes increase globally to address unmet surgical need, consideration must be given to how to navigate surgical risk during this pandemic. Using current COVID-19 prevalence rates, the risk of operating on COVID-19–infected patients in the absence of routine mandatory testing was modeled. Assuming 37 000 planned surger-ies are conducted per week in Canada (excluding Quebec), and the prevalence of COVID-19 infection cases is 0.20%, the number of avoidable deaths that could occur is estimated to be 11.7 but could exceed 17.0. Given the risk of increased morbidity and mortality after elective surgery in asymptom-atic COVID-19-infected patients, preoperative testing should be considered mandatory. © 2021, British Columbia Medical Association. All rights reserved.