One Year of COVID-19: Lessons Learned in a Hand Trauma Center

2020 will be remembered worldwide as the year of COVID-19 outbreak. The onset of this pandemic abruptly changed everybody's life and, in a particular manner, doctors' lives. Our hand surgery department became rapidly one of the first COVID-19-specialized wards in Italy, impacting considerably the authors' routines and activities. In this paper, the authors focus on how the demographics of patients with hand trauma changed and how they had to modify their activity. The authors retrospectively took into consideration all patients reaching their emergency department (ED) with hand trauma between 9 March 2020 (the day of the beginning of the first lockdown in Italy) and 8 March 2021 and compared them to those who reached the ED in the three previous years. Authors have analyzed the number of patients, their gender and age, the severity of their trauma, where the trauma occurred, the type of lesion, the percentage of patients who underwent surgery, and the percentage of patients who had an emergency admission. In the last year, the number of patients reaching the ED for a hand trauma has been reduced by two thirds (975 patients during the past year), the mean age of those patients has slightly increased, the severity of cases has increased, places of trauma and type of lesions have changed, and, lastly, the percentage of patients needing surgery who were admitted immediately has increased. This paper shows how the type of patients reaching the ED changed and discusses how surgeons evolved and modified their habits in treating those patients during the first lockdown and the year that followed

One Year of COVID-19: Lessons Learned in a Hand Trauma Center

2020 will be remembered worldwide as the year of COVID-19 outbreak. The onset of this pandemic abruptly changed everybody’s life and, in a particular manner, doctors’ lives. Our hand surgery department became rapidly one of the first COVID-19-specialized wards in Italy, impacting considerably the authors’ routines and activities. In this paper, the authors focus on how the demographics of patients with hand trauma changed and how they had to modify their activity. The authors retrospectively took into consideration all patients reaching their emergency department (ED) with hand trauma between 9 March 2020 (the day of the beginning of the first lockdown in Italy) and 8 March 2021 and compared them to those who reached the ED in the three previous years. Authors have analyzed the number of patients, their gender and age, the severity of their trauma, where the trauma occurred, the type of lesion, the percentage of patients who underwent surgery, and the percentage of patients who had an emergency admission. In the last year, the number of patients reaching the ED for a hand trauma has been reduced by two thirds (975 patients during the past year), the mean age of those patients has slightly increased, the severity of cases has increased, places of trauma and type of lesions have changed, and, lastly, the percentage of patients needing surgery who were admitted immediately has increased. This paper shows how the type of patients reaching the ED changed and discusses how surgeons evolved and modified their habits in treating those patients during the first lockdown and the year that followed

Clinical Application of Adipose Derived Stem Cells for the Treatment of Aseptic Non-Unions: Current Stage and Future Perspectives—Systematic Review

Fracture non-union is a challenging orthopaedic issue and a socio-economic global burden. Several biological therapies have been introduced to improve traditional surgical approaches. Among these, the latest research has been focusing on adipose tissue as a powerful source of mesenchymal stromal cells, namely, adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs). ADSC are commonly isolated from the stromal vascular fraction (SVF) of liposuctioned hypodermal adipose tissue, and their applications have been widely investigated in many fields, including non-union fractures among musculoskeletal disorders. This review aims at providing a comprehensive update of the literature on clinical application of ADSCs for the treatment of non-unions in humans. The study was performed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Only three articles met our inclusion criteria, with a total of 12 cases analyzed for demographics and harvesting, potential manufacturing and implantation of ADSCs. The review of the literature suggests that adipose derived cell therapy can represent a promising alternative in bone regenerative medicine for the enhancement of non-unions and bone defects. The low number of manuscripts reporting ADSC-based therapies for long bone fracture healing suggests some critical issues that are discussed in this review. Nevertheless, further investigations on human ADSC therapies are needed to improve the knowledge on their translational potential and to possibly achieve a consensus on their use for such applications