• Eur Spine J · May 2021

    A novel hospital capacity versus clinical justification triage score (CCTS) for prioritization of spinal surgeries in the "new normal state" of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    • Gabriel Liu, Jun-Hao Tan, HeyHwee Weng DennisHWDDepartment of Orthopaedic Surgery, University Spine Centre, National University Hospital, National University Health System, 1E Kent Ridge Road, Singapore, 119228, Singapore., Leok Lim Lau, Joseph Thambiah, Naresh Kumar, Jonathan Tan, John Ruiz, Vincent Nga, Sein Lwin, Kejia Teo, Chou Ning, Rohit Vijay Agrawal, Bryan Ng, Weng Hoa Wong, Tseng Tsai Yeo, and Hee-Kit Wong.
    • Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University Spine Centre, National University Hospital, National University Health System, 1E Kent Ridge Road, Singapore, 119228, Singapore. Gabriel_LIU@nuhs.edu.sg.
    • Eur Spine J. 2021 May 1; 30 (5): 1247-1260.

    IntroductionDuring the Coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak, while healthcare systems and hospitals are diverting their resources to combat the pandemic, patients who require spinal surgeries continue to accumulate. The aim of this study is to describe a novel hospital capacity versus clinical justification triage score (CCTS) to prioritize patients who require surgery during the "new normal state" of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodologyA consensus study using the Delphi technique was carried out among clinicians from the Orthopaedic Surgery, Neurosurgery, and Anaesthesia departments. Three rounds of consensus were carried out via survey and Webinar discussions.ResultsA 50-points score system consisting of 4 domains with 4 subdomains was formed. The CCTS were categorized into the hospital capacity, patient factors, disease severity, and surgery complexity domains. A score between 30 and 50 points indicated that the proposed operation should proceed without delay. A score of less than 20 indicates that the proposed operation should be postponed. A score between 20 and 29 indicates that the surgery falls within a grey area where further discussion should be undertaken to make a joint justification for approval of surgery.ConclusionThis study is a proof of concept for the novel CCTS scoring system to prioritize surgeries to meet the rapidly changing demands of the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers a simple and objective method to stratify patients who require surgery and allows these complex and difficult decisions to be unbiased and made transparently among surgeons and hospital administrators.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…