Abstract

Background: 11 March 2020 WHO declares the state of emergency due to Coronavirus disease. All governments take urgent aggressive actions including general lockdown to control disease transmission. The orthopaedic elective surgery activities have been stopped as result of limitation of hospital admissions. So, several patients waiting for surgery, have seen their procedure cancelled or postponed. In addition, few patients were warried about their surgery, or their outpatient visits due to fear of contracting Covid-19. In this particular historical period, we have seen consequences of this delay of treatments especially in untreated surgery complications and surgery rehabilitation programs.

Case series: three patients; one of these has been treated with delay, one has not been treated and one didn’t get appropriate physical rehabilitation as a consequence of Covid-19 pandemic, in Sicily.

Conclusion: delay of treatments or avoided cares for treatable condition are side effect of Covid-19 pandemic, potentially dangerous like the direct consequences of the pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; Orthopaedics; Rehabilitation medicine; Physiotherapy; Orthopaedic and trauma surgery

Abbreviations: WHO: World Health Organization; Covid-19: Coronavirus Disease 2019; PFNA: Proximal Femoral Nail Antirotation; CoVs: Coronaviruses; SARS-Cov: Severe Acute Respiratory Sindrome; MERS-Cov: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome