Impact on the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery Residents' Learning Curve During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Dear Editor, The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has been drastically challenging the integrity of health systems in more than 100 countries around the world (>6,000,000 infected; >370,000 deaths), including Peru, where it has been considered by many experts as the new epicenter of the pandemic in South America (9th worldwide, >5,500 cases/1,000,000 people), due to the exponential growth of infection (>180,000 people) and mortality (>5,000 people) in the general population as well as in health personnel (>150 deaths). Since March 15, 2020, the date on which the state of sanitary emergency was decreed in our country (>80 days of social isolation so far), the Ministry of Health, following the guidelines proposed by several international organizations1, developed an unprecedented series of public health policies to reduce the infection curve and mortality rates attributed to COVID-19. Many of these measures were the optimization of medical care for those infected with the implementation of a differentiated triage, a greater number of beds in intensive care units with support for mechanical ventilation and the displacement of all health personnel to critical care areas for COVID-19 patients; all of this was developed at the cost of suspending and cancelling "non-essential" medical services that include elective surgical procedures. [...]due to the crisis that our health system is going through, as a consequence of the deficit in infrastructure and medical personnel due to the high demand of infected patients, several departments of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery in the country have arranged to provide support, with their surgeons and residents, along with the entire hospital environment for COVID care, in order to provide assistance in the face of the impending hospital collapse.