Introduction

The rapid global spread of COVID‐19 presents an unprecedented crisis for the surgical community. We aimed to identify specific and ongoing challenges in the surgical community by reviewing the current available literature on COVID‐19 and surgery and analysing the social media.

Methods

The literature was reviewed following the PRISMA statement on PUBMED library, searched on May 23nd 2020, using “COVID‐19”, “COVID 19” with “surgery” syntax.

Social media analysis focused on the Twitter®, using ‘COVID19 AND SURGERY’ syntax, performed on Talkwalker®, on April 20th 2020 and revisited on 25th of May 2020, to identify the dynamic changes of surgical challenges. Engagement metrics (EM), calculated based on the number of likes, comments, shares and clicks, were reported as a demonstration of the tweets impact.

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