Ann Case Rep, an open access journal ISSN: 2574-7754 1 Volume 7; Issue 02 Commentary How Riding the Wave of COVID-19 Pandemic has Affected the Quality of Evidence-Based Medicine in Surgical Journal Publications Michele Altomare 1,2* , Stefano Piero Bernardo Cioffi 2 , Shir Sara Bekhor 2 , Ludovica Bartiromo 3 , Andrea Spota 2 , Andrea Piero Chierici 4 , Matteo Schimberni 3 1 Department of Surgical Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, Rome, Italy 2 General Surgery and Trauma Team, ASST Niguarda, Milano, Piazza Ospedale Maggiore 3, Milan, Italy 3 San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy 4 Centre Hospitalier d’Antibes Juan-les-Pins-Chirugie Digestive, Antibes, France * Corresponding author: Michele Altomare, General Surgery and Trauma Team, ASST Niguarda, Milano, Piazza Ospedale Maggiore 3, 20162 Milan, Italy Citation: Altomare M, Cioffi SPB, Bekhor SS, Bartiromo L, Spota A, et al. (2022) How Riding the Wave of COVID-19 Pandemic has Affected the Quality of Evidence-Based Medicine in Surgical Journal Publications. Ann Case Report 7: 791. DOI: 10.29011/2574-7754.100791 Received Date: 25 February, 2022; Accepted Date: 02 March, 2022; Published Date: 07 March 2022 Annals of Case Reports Altomare M, et al. Ann Case Rep: 7: 791. www.doi.org/10.29011/2574-7754.100791 www.gavinpublishers.com Abstract COVID-19 era is one of the most disturbing in recent memory. The scientific community has re-acted quickly. During this critical situation, COVID-19 highlighted criticisms affecting Evidence-Based Medicine in our time clearer than in the past. The present short communication brings to light some of the issues related to the current citation indexing-based system of publication, reporting critical bias that affected the first and second waves of the pandemic. Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Publishing; Surgery; Obstetrics and gynecology; Citation index; H-index; Evidence- Based Medicine Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly changed many aspects of our lives over the past two years. Each era comes with its challenges, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic stands out as one of the most disturbing in recent memory. Since the beginning of the out-break, the scientific community has invested tremendous efforts and resources to foster our understanding of the virus and develop a vaccine. These outstanding efforts catalysed the production of several anti-COVID vaccines in record time. While some argue that speeding up randomized clinical trials was an unavoidable result of the urgency of the situation, some say that the experience from the pandemic has created methods that enhance the efficiency in drug and vaccine development, which are here to stay. The pandemic seems to have affected scientific research by the medical community (and not only) in more than one way, leading to the production of 160,000 COVID-related articles only in 2020. Looking back at March 2020, when the WHO declared the outbreak a pandemic and Italy introduced its first nationwide lockdown, our daily practice was quickly altered, and we faced an unknown situation [1]. As new and aspiring surgeons in general/ emergency surgery and obstetrics/gynecology (OB/GYN) in two major hospitals in Milan (Lombardy, Italy), our clinical activities and surgical learning curve were significantly affected during the first wave in particular [2,3].