Associate Professor Northwell Health Houston, Texas, United States
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns changed spine surgery practices, especially in the hard-hit New York City metropolitan area. Trends in emergent spine surgery cases during and after the pandemic have not been fully studied.
Methods: The New York Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) database was queried for all adult spine surgery claims from the 5 boroughs of New York City and Westchester County from 2019 through 2022. Data analysis was performed in Microsoft Excel version 16.49.
Results: There were 26,066 spine surgery claims in 2019, 20,437 in 2020, 24,829 in 2021, and 26,271 surgeries in 2022. Of the spine surgery claims in 2019, 8,156 (31.3%) were listed as “emergency” surgeries. The number of emergency surgeries has steadily fallen every year since, with 6,327 (30.9%) in 2020, 7,339 (29.6%) in 2021, and 7,286 (27.7%) in 2022; this is a statistically significant difference between years (p < 0.01).
Conclusion : As elective surgeries were restricted during peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York during portions of 2020 and 2021, spine surgery volume overall expectedly fell during those years and rebounded in 2022. A proportional increase in emergency cases might be expected as elective surgeries slowed. However, cases that were classified as “emergent” actually decreased during the pandemic both in total number and percentage of overall surgeries.
