The orthopaedic experience of COVID-19: A literature review.
Ali Al-Kulabi, Mohamed A Mansour, Azeem Thahir
PMID 33550921WHAT IT FOUND
Early orthopaedic care during COVID-19 shifted toward urgent cases: elective surgery was cancelled, screening and PPE expanded, outpatient work moved online, and waiting times lengthened.
Key findings
01Elective orthopaedic surgery was widely cancelled or deferred, while urgent elective and oncological cases were usually kept running.
02Preoperative screening increased surgery waiting times; one Chinese study reported injury-to-surgery waiting increased by 4.1 days and admission-to-surgery waiting by 2.0 days compared with 2019.
03Outpatient services moved online: one report found telemedicine used in 90% of outpatient clinical evaluations, but loss of physical examination remained a problem in orthopaedics.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This was a narrative review, not a systematic review or critical appraisal, so it did not judge study quality or compare outcomes. The search stopped at 1 June 2020, so it describes early pandemic practice and may not reflect current guidance. The included articles were heterogeneous, including case series, project reports and descriptive articles, so the findings are summaries of local practice rather than measured patient results. Many changes were reported as descriptions or recommendations from departments, not tested interventions with patient outcomes.
Declared interests
No funding or conflict of interest declaration appears in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the described changes as evidence that they improved patient outcomes or safety. This is a narrative review of 45 articles that did not appraise study quality or measure outcomes.