As the hospitals moved their resources towards handling the epidemic, many of the non-emergency surgical appointments were cancelled. What will be the long-term consequence of the delay in surgeries? How this influence patients’ choices of healing strategies?
It may be practical to recognize four categories of surgeries:
- emergency for life threatening health conditions, e.g. perforated bowel, serious heart conditions and trauma.
- Elective, non-emergency, however the delay may be harmful, e.g. early stages of cancer, gallbladder stones, problems with peripheral blood vessels (arms and legs),
- Elective than can be delayed without obvious harm, e.g. gastric bypass for weight loss, hip, knee replacement, cataract surgery
- Optional where statistically the outcome of surgery is not expected to be better that a medical management of the condition, e.g. coronary vessels stent in asymptomatic or stable coronary heart disease
The problem is a gray area where the “elective” and “optional” categories overlap and their necessity may be represented differently by different medical specialists. Surgeries (except cosmetic) supposed to be “the last resort”, yet many of them are “overused” as a convenience and/or as the income for the hospital and its personnel. Among those frequently overused lists are: cesarean sections, hip and knee replacements, coronary artery stents (in patient with stable heart condition) meniscus (knee) repair.
It is likely that the epidemic and its emotional consequences will be with us for a while, which means that the hospitals may not return to the full capacity for the elective surgeries. Also patients may be reluctant to go to hospital for elective surgery afraid of hospital-born infections. They may turn towards non-invasive, functional, alternative medicine-based healing strategies.
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