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Original research letter
Initial impact of COVID-19 on paediatric spinal services in Scotland
  1. Matthew Newman,
  2. Enrique Garrido,
  3. Athanasios I Tsirikos
  1. Scottish National Spine Deformity Service, RHSC, Edinburgh, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Matthew Newman; mattynewman87{at}gmail.com

Abstract

COVID-19 has affected many National Health Service Scotland services. Our aim is to describe this impact on the Scottish National Spine Deformity Service (SNSDS). All referrals to the SNSDS from 1 January 2020 to 30 June 2020 were analysed and compared with the same period in 2019. There was a 64.3% decline in referrals during the pandemic to the SNSDS. The mean waiting time to be seen in first clinical appointment for a new referral was 6.5 weeks in 2020 compared with 10.9 in 2019. There were 60 patients still waiting to be seen at the end of the study period.

  • adolescent health
  • health services research
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjpo-2020-000826

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors MN: data collection and analysis. EG: expert opinion. AIT: data analysis, expert opinion, senior author.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. The APC was paid for by the Scoliosis Research Fund.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.