Covid-19 given opportunity to use ultrasound in the plaster room to continue secondary fracture prevention care: A retrospective Fracture Liaison Service study.
Int J Orthop Trauma Nurs
; 43: 100899, 2021 Nov.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1442404
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION:
Fracture Liaison Service (FLS) managed secondary fracture prevention services have been hampered during the COVID-19 pandemic. A challenging opportunity is to use pulse-echo ultrasound (P-EU) in the plaster room. The study had twoobjectives:
can P-EU help our decision to justly avoid DXA/VFA scans in plaster treated women (50-70 years) after fracture and whether its use can encourage or nudge all plaster treated patients (>50 years) who need DXA/VFA scans. PATIENTS ANDMETHODS:
1307 patients (cohort pre-COVID-19) and 1056 patients (cohort peri-COVID-19), each of them ≥ 50 years after recent fracture, were studied. Only in women aged 50-70 years, we used a P-EU decision threshold (DI) >= 0.896 g/cm2 to rule out further analysis by means of DXA/VFA. All other plaster patients received P-EU as part of patient information. Peri-Covid-19, all performed DXA/VFA scans were counted until three months post-study closure. By then each patient still waiting for a DXA/VFA had received a scan.RESULTS:
Peri-COVID-19, 69 out of 191 plaster-treated women aged 50-70 years were ruled out (36%), for plaster and not in-plaster treated women aged 50-70 years, it was 27%. Comparing all peri-to pre-COVID-19 plaster-treated women and men, a significant P-EU nudging effect was found (difference in proportions 8.8%) P = .001.CONCLUSION:
The combination of patient information and P-EU in the plaster room is effective to reduce DXA/VFA scans and allow extra patients to undergo DXA/VFA. After all, more than a quarter of 50-70 years old women in plaster did not need to be scanned.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Spinal Fractures
/
Osteoporotic Fractures
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Aged
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Language:
English
Journal:
Int J Orthop Trauma Nurs
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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