GESA has added a document for paediatric gastroenterologists to its suite of recommendations and principles for practice during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It reinforced earlier advice from GESA and other organisations including:

• triage and postponement of all non-urgent endoscopy procedures
• guidance on safe endoscopy practices
• utilisation of temporary MBS item numbers to support telehealth consultations where appropriate
• specific advice for patient groups such as those with IBD.

“In general, we reiterate the importance of patients remaining on their current medications, and only changing or stopping treatment on discussing with their treating team,” it said.

Authored by GESA Paediatric Network chair Dr Edward Giles and GESA president Associate Professor Simone Strasser, it noted paediatric patients were at lower risk for COVID-19 disease than much older patients.

“However, we must remain cautious as new information becomes available and also play our part in the wider health-care system,” they said.

Dr Giles told the limbic that while paediatric gastroenterologists did far less scoping than their adult colleagues, there was the potential to miss something with the restrictions on non-urgent procedures.

“There is no doubt we are delaying a lot of procedures …and probably 90% of the time that is fine but sometimes delaying will cause difficulties because we are making decisions that we wouldn’t normally in terms of endoscopy.”

“In my particular craft group [of IBD] I think the small delay to elective procedures of 6 weeks up to 2-3 months, will have negligible to minimal impact if we can catch up.”

“As long as families and patients have a way to contact their department and health professionals, hopefully we can escalate things when we need to.”

“But if it goes on much longer the risk of something being missed with a substantial delay starts to build up. It is  a concern but it has to be balanced against other risks.”

As an example, he said delays in scoping children with eosinophilic esophagitis could potentially see them in emergency with strictures or obstructions.

GESA has recently launched a secure and confidential online chatroom for clinical discussions of de-identified patients. The GESA e-Forum is available via the myINTERACT app.