COVID-19. An update for orthopedic surgeons

Abstract

<jats:p>The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our world in a short period of time, and the orthopedic surgery practice was not an exclusion. Elective care was deferred in most health care facilities and emergency care was continued with strict precautions. With rapid progression of the pandemic, the response of the medical community is also rapidly changing in all aspects of delivering care. This led to a large number of publications with reports, guidelines, measures, ways to react to the crisis, and post-pandemic predictions and speculations. In this review we aimed at summarizing all the relevant information to the orthopedic surgery community. To do this, a comprehensive search was performed with all related terms on two scientific search engines, PubMed and SCOPUS, and the results were filtered by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method. The result was 72 articles that were further reduced to 33 articles after full text reading. The resultant information was organized under 5 main headings; the impact of pandemic on the orthopedic practice, COVID-19 and the trauma patient, elective and emergency surgeries during the pandemic, peri-operative management of the patient with COVID-19, Miscellaneous effects of the pandemic such as those on training programs and the evolution of telemedicine. This review represents the most up to date information published in the literature that is a must-know to every orthopedic surgeon.</jats:p>

How fast is the peer-review process for orthopaedic publications related to the Covid-19 pandemic?

“…In contrast, Kambhampati SBS et al 2 at the time of their study, they defined only 35, which means that the orthopaedic journals increased their production of articles (any article type) related to Covid-19 by about nine folds. Abdelnasser MK et al 10 performed a PubMed and Scopus databases search on May 22nd to identify the Orthopaedics publications related to Covid-19 (the same concern in the current study). However, they used more precise search terms than what we used in the current study; they retrieved 262 articles compared to 231 articles in the current study.…”

“…Abdelnasser MK et al. 10 performed a PubMed and Scopus databases search on May 22nd to identify the Orthopaedics publications related to Covid-19 (the same concern in the current study). However, they used more precise search terms than what we used in the current study; they retrieved 262 articles compared to 231 articles in the current study.…”

Adapting Policy Guidelines for Spine Surgeries During COVID-19 Pandemic in View of Evolving Evidences: An Early Experience From a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

“…Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) ratings are based on the level of fluid protection in the critical zone or chest region of the surgical gown. Surgical gowns AAMI-level-III (typically those found in operating rooms) are recommended for use during surgical and aerosolized blood-generating procedures [ 8 , 11 , 12 , 17 - 19 ].…”

“…can be managed at the patient’s home or the nearest hospital. The patient is instructed to perform self-directed physical therapy at home and transfer to inpatient rehabilitation should be minimized which can significantly reduce the length of hospital stay [ 10 , 11 , 16 , 17 , 19 , 25 ]. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, we were transferring the paraplegic patients to our hospital-based rehabilitation center where discharge time was about six weeks.…”

Editorial: Opportunities for Surgical Research in the COVID-19 Era

“…The surgical team is made up of several members, each offering a specific service for surgery to succeed. The coronavirus has been shown to spread faster in air-conditioned, closed and congested spaces, and it is now recommended to switch off airconditioning in theatre (15,16,17). In addition, ventilation systems are in direct contact with the patients' airways and many procedures such as intubations, suction and endoscopy generate aerosols (18).…”