Impact of COVID-19 on the practice of orthopaedics and trauma-an epidemiological study of the full pandemic year of a tertiary care centre of New Delhi.

PURPOSE: In an observational study, we studied the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on our clinical practice of trauma and orthopaedics, in tertiary care hospital of New Delhi.

METHODS: We collated the hospital data for 2019 and 2020 and analyzed and compared it extensively. We looked for the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on several important clinical practice parameters like outpatient attendance, inpatients admissions, and surgery. The correlation of the number of surgeries done during the pandemic time was done with the number of positive cases in Delhi, monthwise. A trend of recovery was also observed.

RESULTS: During the pandemic period, the attendance of outpatients fell by 71.93%, admissions by 59.35%, and surgery by 55.78%. Adult trauma surgery was the least affected (42.21%), followed by arthroscopic surgery (49.81%). Fragility hip fractures requiring bipolar hip arthroplasty were reduced by 34.15%. The maximum adverse impact of the pandemic was seen on arthroplasty surgery (hip > knee), followed by on the paediatric orthopaedic cases, and spinal surgery. We notice a "lazy V-shaped" recovery after the lockdown period.

CONCLUSION: COVID-19 pandemic has had a severe impact on all aspects of orthopaedics and trauma's clinical practice in our setup. These adverse effects were maximally seen during the lockdown period, with a reduction of 90.77% in the outpatients, 84.63% in the admissions, and 86.67% in the surgery.