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Background/aim A notable re-allocation of healthcare resources and specific clinical and organizational measures have been required to prevent COVID-19 infection among hospitalized patients and healthcare workers. Patients and methods From March 9th to May 9th 2020 we performed colorectal cancer elective surgery on 25 patients: a pre-hospital screening was carried out in order to avoid hospitalization of patients suspected of COVID-19 infection. Results All patients (median age=76 years; range=37-88 years) were considered suitable for admission after telephone triage; the median interval between primary diagnosis and hospital admission was 23.1 days (range=1-55 days). The median hospitalization was 7.8 days (range=4-18 days). One COVID-19-associated death was reported. Conclusion Our experience demonstrates that safe colorectal cancer elective surgery can be performed during the pandemic COVID-19. Further consensus and guidelines to prevent diffusion of pandemic diseases among hospitalized patients and healthcare workers still need to be implemented.

Several studies have demonstrated that training with a laparoscopic simulator improves laparoscopic technical skills. We describe how to build a homemade, low-cost laparoscopic training simulator (LABOT) and its validation as a training instrument. First, sixty surgeons filled out a survey characterized by 12 closed-answer questions about realism, ergonomics, and usefulness for surgical training (global scores ranged from 1&mdash, very insufficient to 5&mdash, very good). The results of the questionnaires showed a mean (&plusmn, SD) rating score of 4.18 &plusmn, 0.65 for all users. Then, 15 students (group S) and 15 residents (group R) completed 3 different tasks (T1, T2, T3), which were repeated twice to evaluate the execution time and the number of users&rsquo, procedural errors. For T1, the R group had a lower mean execution time and a lower rate of procedural errors than the S group, for T2, the R and S groups had a similar mean execution time, but the R group had a lower rate of errors, and for T3, the R and S groups had a similar mean execution time and rate of errors. On a second attempt, all the participants tended to improve their results in doing these surgical tasks, nevertheless, after subgroup analysis of the T1 results, the S group had a better improvement of both parameters. Our laparoscopic simulator is simple to build, low-cost, easy to use, and seems to be a suitable resource for improving laparoscopic skills. In the future, further studies should evaluate the potential of this laparoscopic box on long-term surgical training with more complex tasks and simulation attempts.