The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a global health crisis that has had a deep impact on our everyday lives and our surgical practices. At present, roughly 4 million people have been infected and 300,000 people have died. This will be the most serious global health crisis in our generation. Many countries have enacted strictly enforced lockdown measures to prevent the spread of disease, a strategy with tremendous impacts on the modern economy and social stability.
Not only do the infectiousness of COVID-19 and its patterns of transmission threaten our sense of safety, but the safety measures put in place for health care providers have limited the scope of daily practice in spine care. In some countries, spine surgeons have stopped performing routine spine surgery and have rushed into the battlefield against coronavirus to rescue people endangered by this life-and-death situation. It is certain that the pandemic will lead to permanent shifts in our daily pattern of surgical practices and academic life in ways that will become apparent very soon.
Therefore, we need answers to several questions.
Will hospitals reopen and jobs come back? Will we travel for conferences again? How do we restart our everyday surgical life in the midst of the coronavirus crisis?
To help us make sense of the shifting ground beneath our feet, Neurospine asked nine leading spine surgeons from the US, Europe, China, and Korea to share their experiences and predictions about spine surgery and research during and after the pandemic.
Neurospine Editors Prof. Jeffrey Wang (USA), Prof. Jau-Ching Wu (Taiwan) and Prof. Yoon Ha (Korea) organized and participated in two NASS webinars for overcoming COVID 19 Pandemic in spine surgery
COVID-19: Crisis and Recovery
Jeffrey C. Wang
Yoon Ha
COVID-19: Crisis and Recovery Updates from the International Community
