Orthopaedics and COVID-19

There are a subset of patients suffering from arthritis pain and also suffering from ligamentous meniscal injuries, who have to put the surgeries forward due to the COVID.

There are a lot of people who are suffering from immense pain, they have postponed the surgery thinking that they will do it later, but now since the COVID has taken 6-7 months these patients are finding it tremendously difficult to do household activities like getting out of the bed, going to the restroom.

For example, a patient with very severe knee arthritis with a stress fracture or a patient with very severe hip arthritis, ligament injury with instability bleeding to bucket-handle meniscal tears. These are the people who are really feeling difficult to do normal household activities because they have to limp or there is a constant fear of fall due to severe arthritis.

Sakra World Hospital has found the best way to operate patients who are considered as elective but unfortunately because of the pain they cannot wait for a long time. We think that with our exposure we did this 200 surgeries but we are very happy to say that neither the doctors got infected with COVID-19 nor our patient got infected with COVID.

To prevent cross-contamination among fellow surgeons, Sakra World Hospital have a dedicated orthopaedic team to treat suspected or diagnosed COVID-19 patients. Patients attendees are also screened for the risk factors and the number of visitors.
Among these 200 elective procedures involved knee joint replacement and many arthroscopic procedures like ligament, meniscus injury and shoulder arthroscopy procedures. So far we have performed 300 to 350 orthopaedic procedures without having any cross infection rate both to the doctor and to the patient. Sakra also offers home health care where rehabilitation or the post-fracture treatment, and post-replacement patients are treated. It is all about maintaining a proper chain so that the patient benefits at these times of crisis and also they don’t have the fear of getting infected by this coronavirus.

Different COVID Zones at Sakra World Hospital to maintain Patient Safety

Strict surveillance eye is very much required, from the time patient decide to go for the surgery, better to go for COVID testing and also segregating the hospital three zones, one is COVID zone or red zone where patients came COVID positive and one is holding zones, where patients are waiting to get results. Holding zone is treated with the highest protocols which are also considered as COVID negative zones and there is a completely COVID free zone where the patients have been tested for COVID and the result came negative.

Post-surgery Rehabilitation during COVID-19

Post-surgery rehabilitation is very important and we always try to encourage physiotherapists to do only home visits and not to do any OPD practice. So the rehabilitation specialists are doing only home visits when the patients are already tested by the hospitals. So there is never a mixing of COVID positive and COVID negative patients.