European Association of Urology Guidelines Office Rapid Reaction Group: An Organisation-wide Collaborative Effort to Adapt the European Association of Urology Guidelines Recommendations to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Era
Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is unlike anything seen before by modern science-based medicine. Health systems across the world are struggling to manage it.
Added to this struggle are the effects of social confinement and isolation. This brings into question whether the latest guidelines are relevant in this crisis.
We aim to support urologists in this difficult situation by providing tools that can facilitate decision making, and to minimise the impact and risks for both patients and health professionals delivering urological care, whenever possible. We hope that the revised recommendations will assist urologist surgeons across the globe to guide the management of urological conditions during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is unlike anything seen before by modern science-based medicine. As a scientific society, the European Association of Urology, via the guidelines, section offices, and the European Urology family of journals, we believe that it is important that we try to support urologists in this difficult situation.
We aim to do this by providing tools that can facilitate decision making with the goal to minimise the impact and risks for both patients and health professionals delivering urological care, whenever possible, although it is clear that it is not always possible to mitigate them entirely. We hope that these revised recommendations will fill an important urological practice void and assist urologist surgeons across the globe as they do their very best to deal with the crisis of our generation.