How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Attendance at a Tertiary Orthopedic Center Emergency Department: A Comparison Between the First and Second Waves

Overview

Journal Diagnostics (Basel)

Specialty Radiology

Date 2022 Nov 26

PMID 36428919

Authors

Eleonora Carlicchi

Maria Eugenia Di Sabato

Antonino Cincotta

Riccardo Accetta

Alberto Aliprandi

Domenico Albano

Luca Maria Sconfienza

Carmelo Messina

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Italy was the first European country to face the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020. The country quickly implemented strategies to contain contagions and re-organize medical resources. We evaluated the COVID-19 effects on the activity of a tertiary-level orthopedic emergency department (ED) during the first and second pandemic waves. We retrospectively collected and compared clinical radiological data of ED admissions during four periods: period A, first pandemic wave; period B, second pandemic wave; period C, three months before the COVID-19 outbreak; period D, same timeframe of the first wave but in 2019. During period A, we found a reduction in ED admissions (-68.2% and -59.9% compared with periods D and C) and a decrease in white codes (non-urgent) (-7.5%) compared with pre-pandemic periods, with a slight increase for all other codes: +6.3% green (urgent, not critical), +0.8% yellow (moderately critical) and +0.3% red (highly urgent, risk of death). We observed an increased rate of fracture diagnosis in period A: +14.9% and +13.3% compared with periods D and C. Our study shows that the COVID-19 pandemic caused a drastic change in the ED patient flow and clinical radiological activity, with a marked reduction in admissions and an increased rate of more severe triage codes and diagnosed fractures.

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