A new paper suggests three solutions to addressing the backlog of non-urgent surgeries delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"As a surgeon, I understand why hospitals needed to delay many elective surgeries to ensure there was enough space and health care workers available to take care of the sickest patients with COVID-19," says Jessica Billig, M.D., a resident physician of plastic surgery at Michigan Medicine and lead author of the paper published inAnnals of Surgery. "But we know that continuing to delay these surgeries could result in poor health outcomes for our patients. Which makes us ask, how can we start to work through the backlog of surgeries efficiently and swiftly?"
Billig and her co-author, Erika Sears, M.D., an assistant professor of plastic surgery at Michigan Medicine, provide three strategies to address the need for surgical care:
"It should be noted, that if many of these surgeries continue to be put off, many of these health conditions will continue to progress and could cause the patient to become sicker," Billig says. "We hope these strategies offer our colleagues across the country some thoughts to consider so we can accommodate the patients that need our surgical care."
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Materialsprovided byMichigan Medicine - University of Michigan. Original written by Kylie Urban.注意:内容可能被编辑风格d length.
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