ORTHOPOD

Full title

Orthopaedic Trauma Hospital Outcomes – Patient Operative Delays: A prospective multicentre service evaluation of trauma burden and resources.

Background

There is a lack of recent, national data assessing trauma workload, theatre capacity and waiting times for trauma patients.

There is national guidance to standardise waiting times for some groups of patients, but not others. In the case of hip fractures, there is good compliance with these targets, yet national compliance with others is unclear.

The recent pandemic has had a profound and enduring impact on the ability of surgical teams to manage cases promptly and effectively.

What we did

This service evaluation captured all patients (adults and children) undergoing an operation following bony, ligamentous and joint injury or musculoskeletal sepsis (including hands and spine)

We aimed to define and quantify the current orthopaedic trauma workload across the UK.

As well as to describe the number of trauma inpatient and ambulatory operative sessions at unit level across the UK, and the average time to surgery for individual fracture groups and assess if there is a variance both between and within units.

Finally, we assessed if time to surgery for specific fractures is compliant with NICE/BOAST guidelines.