Afterhours patient phone calls: a quality improvement study.

Unlabelled: The objective was to determine the most common topic of patient phone calls received by on-call orthopedic residents at a single academic institution in order to identify areas of improvement for patient outcome and resident workload and wellbeing.

Design: Patient phone calls over 82 shifts were documented from May 2020 to January 2021 by on-call orthopedic residents. The length, nature, and associated attending physician of each call were recorded, as well as whether the call resulted in an emergency department visit.

Design considerations for piezocomposite materials for electrical stimulation in medical implants.

Incidence of non-union following long bone fracture fixation and spinal fusion procedures is increasing, and very costly for patients and the medical system. Direct current (DC) electrical stimulation has shown success as an adjunct therapy to stimulate bone healing and increase surgery success rates, though drawbacks of current devices and implantable battery packs have limited widespread use. Energy harvesting utilising piezoelectric materials has been widely studied for powering devices without a battery, and a preclinical animal study has shown efficacy of a piezocomposite spinal fusion implant resulting in faster, more robust fusion.

Evaluating factors affecting length of hospital stay in patients with metastatic bone tumors.

Background: Specific medical conditions known to increase LOS following orthopedic surgery including congestive heart failure, diabetes mellitus and COPD. It is also known that patient demographics such as increasing age and non-white race can negatively affect orthopedic surgical outcomes However, there is a lack of research examining the effect of these variables on patients with metastatic bone disease regarding length of hospital stay and ultimately economic burden following surgery. The aim of this study is to identify factors affecting LOS in patients following surgery for bone metastasis.