During COVID-19 pandemic, there has been worldwide cancellation of elective surgeries to protect patients from nosocomial transmission and peri-operative complications. With unfolding situation, there is definite need for exit strategy to reinstate elective services. Therefore, more literature evidence supporting exit plan to elective surgical services is imperative to adopt a safe working principle. This study aims to provide evidence for safe elective surgical practice during pandemic. This single centre, prospective, observational study included adult patients who were admitted and underwent elective surgical procedures in the trust's COVID-Free environment at Birmingham Treatment Centre between 19th May and 14th July’2020. Data collected on demographic parameters, peri-operative variables, surgical specialities, COVID-19 RT-PCR testing results, post-operative complications and mortality. The study also highlighted the protocols it followed for the elective services during pandemic.Abstract
Background
Methods
Current perception is that standard Cefuroxime only [C4] based prophylaxis regimen demonstrated higher association with C Difficile (C. Diff) diarrhoea. This has prompted change in antibiotics prophylaxis combination regimens like Flucloxacillin-Gentamycin (F-G], Teicoplanin- Gentamycin [T-G] and single dose Cefuroxime-Gentamycin [C-G]. The current study was done to investigate the association of C. Diff diarrhoea and surgical site infection (SSI) rate with Cefuroxime only regimen prophylaxis in fracture neck of femur surgery. A retrospective analysis for 2009–2012 was performed for 1502 neck of femur fracture patients undergoing surgery. The factors studied were ASA grade, SSI, C. Diff diarrhoea rates in patients with Cefuroxime (induction plus two doses) based prophylactic regimen. The data was obtained from coding department and further streamlined based on microbiology. 1242 patients were included in the study who received Cefuroxime only regimen. The Male : Female distribution was 353 : 889. The average ASA grade was 3. The analysis demonstrated that C. Diff diarrhoea rate in the study population was 1.29%. The SSI rate stood at 3.06% with superficial infection at 2.5 % and deep at 0.56 %. Our single centre based study demonstrated low C. Difficile related diarrhoea rates with Cefuroxime only regimen. The SSI rates were also low as compared to the current literature thus concluding that Cefuroxime only antibiotic regimen can safely be administered in neck of femur surgery.
As modern day lifestyle is becoming more active so is the incidence of meniscal injuries on rise. An injury to the meniscus is a common orthopedic problem with the incidence of meniscal injury resulting in meniscectomy of 61 per 100,000 populations per year. The common practice in diagnosis of the meniscal injury involves clinical examination followed by radiological or arthroscopic confirmation. The clinical tests commonly performed are joint line tenderness (JLT), McMurray's Test (Non-weight bearing test) and Childress Test (Weight Bearing Test). In our study, we performed the comparative analysis of the validity parameters for components of clinical examination in form of Joint line tenderness, McMurray's test and Childress Test.Introduction
Aim
Meniscal injuries are very common cause of knee pain and resultant attendance to the orthopaedics or sports medicine clinics. The current protocol stands at clinical examination at first contact and establishing a diagnosis with clinical indicators like joint line tenderness, McMurray's, Apley's and weight-bearing test for meniscal pathology followed by MRI scan to confirm the diagnosis. Either surgical or conservative management follows this. We aim to assess clinical examination alone provide sufficient evidence for further management of meniscal injury and does a role of MRI scan exist to corroborate the findings. We retrospectively studied 88 patients attending the sports medicine clinic for the duration 2004–2007 examined by senior clinical assessor. We investigated the co-relation of the clinical and MRI findings to validate if there exists an actual clinical justification to use MRI scan in every patient We divided the data in further subsets of 57 patients in whom both clinical examination and MRI scan were performed and were validated by arthroscopy. The data obtained was analysed for parameters of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value [PPV] and negative predictive value [NPV]Introduction
Methodology