The prime of COVID-19 forced institutions and hospitals to convert operating rooms into intensive care units. Now as the disease prevalence drops and plateaus in several countries, elective surgeries are being slowly resuming. Such that asymptomatic carriers too would approach hospitals for surgical needs. Coronaviruses are understood to transmit both by droplets and aerosols. Orthopaedic surgery requires regular use of high-speed instruments like power drills, oscillating saws and burrs. Several medical procedures are known to create aerosols thereby exposing the surgeon to contract the virus. Adequate know-how and protective means are mandatory to safeguard the surgical team from inevitable exposure.

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a large body of literature regarding the impact of COVID-19 on orthopaedic care and practice. This rapid review aims to synthesize this published literature to give the orthopaedic fraternity an overview about the best practices that need to be followed during this period. Methodology A rapid review was conducted following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) statement for rapid reviews on the impact of COVID-19 on orthopaedic care and practice. A Pubmed search was done to identify all literature related to the impact of COVID-19 on orthopaedic care and practice, published between December 2019 and October 2020 using a predefined search strategy. The final review included 375 peer-reviewed articles addressing the objectives. Results The majority of articles were expert opinions (37.1%) and narrative reviews (13.1%). There were 17.3% retrospective studies and 2.1% prospective studies with only one randomized control trial and ten systematic reviews. 83.8% of articles had levels of evidence IV and V, 79.5% of the articles were published in core-orthopaedic journals. Maximum publications were from the United States of America (31.7%), followed by India (11.5%). European countries together contributed to 32.0% of all publications. Conclusion COVID-19 has had a significant impact on all aspects of orthopaedic care and practice. The pandemic has affected outpatient clinics, emergency and elective surgery, rehabilitation, resident training, personnel management, use of personal protective equipment, telemedicine and all sub-specialities of orthopaedics. Orthopaedic practice will require the incorporation of new technologies, restructuring of health systems and reorganizing of training programs for optimal patient care. There would also be a need for frequent review of emerging literature to provide evidence-based guidelines to the orthopaedic fraternity which will not only help in mitigation of transmission of disease but also ensure continuity of optimum patient care.

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