Low 30-day mortality in South African orthopaedic patients undergoing surgery at an academic hospital during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: It was safe to perform orthopaedic procedures at our hospital during the first COVID-19 peak

Abstract

South Africa (SA) remains in a national state of disaster due to COVID-19 and the ongoing detection of active SARS-CoV-2 cases in our population, mainly driven by the local Beta variant 501Y.V2. Our nation's recorded recovery rate remains high at 92%. [1] Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH), one of the two state academic hospitals in our area, services patients from vulnerable communities, where infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV continue to dominate the health landscape and multiple comorbidities exist, posing a potential risk for the development of more severe forms of COVID-19-associated illness. Many of our orthopaedic patients are from a low socioeconomic background and low-income households, associated with potential vulnerabilities.At GSH, both elective and non-urgent surgeries were cancelled during the initial phases of the hard lockdown, 26 March to the end of May 2020. [2] After the initial hard lockdown, we resumed semi-urgent surgeries in lower-risk patients. We used the medically necessary, time-sensitive procedures (MeNTS) scoring system to help select the most appropriate orthopaedic patients to perform surgery This open-access article is distributed under Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC 4.0.

Postoperative mortality in Africa: are there any improvements in the last decade?

“…After surgery, 93 fatalities were documented, 49 of which happened within a day following operation 7 . In August 2021, Waters et al 8 reported a 2.5% death rate after orthopedic procedures in 346 patients in South Africa. According to Paterson and colleagues, women in Africa are at a greater risk of suffering postoperative problems and dying.…”