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How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Attendance at a Tertiary Orthopedic Center Emergency Department: A Comparison between the First and Second Waves
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...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9689342/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36428919 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics12112855 |
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author | Carlicchi, Eleonora Di Sabato, Maria Eugenia Cincotta, Antonino Accetta, Riccardo Aliprandi, Alberto Albano, Domenico Sconfienza, Luca Maria Messina, Carmelo |
author_facet | Carlicchi, Eleonora Di Sabato, Maria Eugenia Cincotta, Antonino Accetta, Riccardo Aliprandi, Alberto Albano, Domenico Sconfienza, Luca Maria Messina, Carmelo |
author_sort | Carlicchi, Eleonora |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9689342 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-96893422022-11-25 How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Attendance at a Tertiary Orthopedic Center Emergency Department: A Comparison between the First and Second Waves Carlicchi, Eleonora Di Sabato, Maria Eugenia Cincotta, Antonino Accetta, Riccardo Aliprandi, Alberto Albano, Domenico Sconfienza, Luca Maria Messina, Carmelo Diagnostics (Basel) Article 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. MDPI 2022-11-18 /pmc/articles/PMC9689342/ /pubmed/36428919 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics12112855 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Carlicchi, Eleonora Di Sabato, Maria Eugenia Cincotta, Antonino Accetta, Riccardo Aliprandi, Alberto Albano, Domenico Sconfienza, Luca Maria Messina, Carmelo How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Attendance at a Tertiary Orthopedic Center Emergency Department: A Comparison between the First and Second Waves |
title | How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Attendance at a Tertiary Orthopedic Center Emergency Department: A Comparison between the First and Second Waves |
title_full | How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Attendance at a Tertiary Orthopedic Center Emergency Department: A Comparison between the First and Second Waves |
title_fullStr | How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Attendance at a Tertiary Orthopedic Center Emergency Department: A Comparison between the First and Second Waves |
title_full_unstemmed | How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Attendance at a Tertiary Orthopedic Center Emergency Department: A Comparison between the First and Second Waves |
title_short | How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Attendance at a Tertiary Orthopedic Center Emergency Department: A Comparison between the First and Second Waves |
title_sort | how the covid-19 pandemic affected attendance at a tertiary orthopedic center emergency department: a comparison between the first and second waves |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9689342/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36428919 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics12112855 |
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