The Impact of the Second Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Non-COVID Hospital Care in a Tertiary Hospital in Spain Gasch Illescas, Antonia Praena Fernández, Juan Manuel COVID-19/epidemiology Pandemics Inpatients Spain/epidemiology Hospitalization Hospital mortality Retrospective studies Humans Male Hospital care Supplementary Materials: The supplementary information can be accessed and downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/jcm12175507/s1 In 2020, Spain ranked fourth among European countries with the highest excess mortality due to COVID-19 disease. This study evaluates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on non-COVID patients in a tertiary hospital during the second pandemic wave in Spain (22 June 2020-6 December 2020). Data from Virgen del Rocio University Hospital in Seville during that timeframe were compared with the data from the same period in the preceding two years (2018-2019). Between-group comparisons were performed using the Chi-squared test, Student's t-test, or Mann-Whitney U tests, as appropriate. A total of 63,137 non-COVID patients were included in this study. During the second pandemic wave, a 19% decrease was observed in the annual number of non-COVID admissions overall (18,260 vs. 22,439, p < 0.001), but a 10% increase in the proportion of emergency admissions (60.6% vs. 54.93%, p < 0.001), a higher severity level of patients (1.79 vs. 1.72, p < 0.001), a longer in-hospital stay (7.02 vs. 6.74 days, p < 0.001), a 26% increase in non-COVID mortality (4.9% vs. 3.9%, p < 0.001), and a 50% increase in global mortality (5.9 vs. 3.9, p < 0.001) were also observed. In terms of both medical and surgical diagnoses, a significant reduction in the number of admissions and an increase in in-hospital mortality were observed. These results demonstrate the significant impact of the pandemic on hospital care, similar to what was previously observed during the initial wave in the same hospital. Our findings emphasize the need to include non-COVID patients when assessing the broad impact of the pandemic on healthcare, beyond its direct effects on COVID-19 patients. 2023-10-26T07:35:48Z 2023-10-26T07:35:48Z 2023-07-24 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Gasch-Illescas, A.; Andrade-Arroyo, M.; Vallejo-Vaz, A.J.; Praena-Fernández, J.M.; Guerrero, J.A.; Calderón, E.J.; Pollán, M.; Medrano, F.J. The Impact of the Second Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Non-COVID Hospital Care in a Tertiary Hospital in Spain. J. Clin. Med. 2023, 12, 5507. [https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm12175507] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/85257 10.3390/jcm12175507 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 4.0 Internacional MDPI