Page 34 - ISAKOS 2021 Newsletter Volume 1

CURRENT CONCEPTS
COVID-19: A Worldwide Human Perspective
Daniel A. Slullitel, MD
Instituto Jaime Slullitel Sanatorio de la Mujer, Rosario, ARGENTINA
Jeffrey S. Abrams, MD
Seton Hall University, University Medical Center of Princeton, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Julian A. Feller, FRACS
OrthoSport Victoria Research Unit, Epworth Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA
Margaret W. M. Fok, FRCSEd(Ortho), MBChB
Queen Mary Hospital, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, CHINA
Eiji Itoi, MD, PhD
Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, JAPAN
Manuel Mosquera, MD
Clinica la Carolina, Bogota, COLOMBIA
Daniel Slullitel
Mankind is confronting a unique moment. A single threat is testing all countries in the world. Each country is facing similar challenges that are influenced by its geography, cultural, political, and economic background.
Science is, indeed, helping us in very different ways—mainly by trying to minimize health damage, by limiting propagation of the virus, and of course, by searching for a cure. On the other hand, the Internet is keeping us informed during this period when close human contact should be kept minimal. We are facing changes on our daily life: our freedom of circulation is being jeopardized and limited in order to restrain the spread of the virus, our contact with patients is modified or nullified, and our souls are hit by fear of having the disease and being contagious to others. Governments have taken different strategies, but who knows whether these strategies are right or wrong?
In 2020, the ISAKOS Education Committee, with the full support of the Executive Board, employed its intrinsic worldwide-reaching capabilities to host a series of webinars focused on helping the global community. In each webinar, COVID-19 was present not as an educational subject but as the subject of an informal conversation between distant friends. During these conversations, it became clear that while the threat (COVID-19) and the associated worries are the same everywhere, the ways of fighting the virus are different.
We asked friends from around the world to share their personal experience of this outbreak and have been honored with their written responses in spite of their tight pandemic schedules.
Jeffrey Abrams
The corona virus has been a unique and frightening event all over the world. In the United States, the New York and New Jersey regions were the first to be severely affected. In the early months, many individuals died because of the lack of knowledge on how to treat the respiratory distress syndrome and organ failure. Although many COVID-19 patients were older, many younger health care workers were affected as well. This disease is very infectious and requires protective spacing to limit the spread. The availability of hospital beds, particularly ICU beds, was a problem. Our postoperative recovery room became a COVID Unit monitored by the anesthesiologists.
At this time, we are in a much better place, and the number of hospitalized patients with COVID has decreased. We are better equipped with knowledge, and it seems rare that someone dies of this virus. Work for an orthopaedic surgeon has returned to elective surgery in the surgery centers and hospital. Total joint replacement, arthroscopic, spinal, and extremity surgery schedules are about 85% full.
32 ISAKOS NEWSLETTER 2021: VOLUME I