• Maja Cimerman and Jesensek PapezBredaB.
• Bratisl Med J. 2022 Jan 1; 123 (4): 262-267.

ObjectivesWe wanted to analyze the impact of the pandemic on the treatment and rehabilitation of these patients.BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on medical services globally and it also affected the field of elective surgery and rehabilitation medicine. Among the most common procedures is the arthroscopic knee surgery, which is an intervention that warrants postoperative physical therapy.MethodsThe study included 105 patients subdivided in three groups, namely those treated before the pandemic, those treated during lockdown and those treated during the pandemic. We compared the decline in the number of patients and the rehabilitation outcome of the referred patients. The rehabilitation outcome was assessed by measuring the range of knee flexion.ResultsThere were 132 patients included in the analysis of the decline in the number of referred patients during the pandemic. The decline was 36 %. Out of these patients, 105 were included in the analysis of the effectiveness of rehabilitation, and we demonstrated that there were no statistically important differences in improvement among the groups (p=0.246).ConclusionShorter treatment due to the COVID-19 pandemic did not have a statistically significant effect on the achieved knee flexion, but we noticed a reduction in the number of patients referred to our ward after knee arthroscopy (Tab. 6, Ref. 14).

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