Ann Orthop Musculoskelet Disord | Volume 4, Issue 1 | Research Article | Open Access
Taylor L Simonian1 and Peter T Simonian1,2*
1Simonian Sports Medicine Clinic, USA
2Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine, University of Washington, USA
*Correspondance to: Peter T Simonian
Fulltext PDFBackground: Throughout the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, multiple screening and testing tools are important to prevent disease spread and provide safety for surgical patients. These screening tests fail to identify asymptomatic carriers. To date, we are unaware of a particular infected population that is more prone to screening test failure. Questions/Purposes: COVID-19 screening questionnaires and temperature checks are being utilized daily. The purpose of this study was to determine whether gender affects screening test reliability when confirmed with immediate COVID-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing. In other words, is a particular gender more likely to be an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19? Methods: Two unique screening questionnaires, multiple temperature checks, and a PCR test were collected for all 1,638 patients preoperatively. Nasopharyngeal PCR tests from 1638 patients undergoing elective orthopedic surgery to check for COVID-19 infection were collected. Of the 1,638 patients that qualified through screening to be tested, 781 were female and 857 were male. The age range among the subjects was 13 to 86 years, and the average age among the patients was 52.61 years. Results: Of the 1638 PCR tested for COVID-19, 21 tested positive and the other 1,617 tested negative. Overall, there were 781 females and 857 males. From the subgroup that tested positive, there were 14 females and 7 males. Approximately 1.28% of the subjects tested PCR positive for COVID-19 within 48 hours of elective orthopedic surgery. The positivity rate of females (1.79%) was more than double that of males (0.82%) which was statistically significant (p=0.0398). Conclusion: To our knowledge, there is no data demonstrating a gender difference in asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers. Our data demonstrates greater than twice the proportion of female asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers compared to their male counterparts. Based on our evidence, we conclude that females are more likely to be asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers when compared to males in this preoperative population.
Covid-19; Covid; Corona Virus; Coronavirus disease 2019; SARS-CoV-2
Simonian TL, Simonian PT. Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2, Polymerase Chain Reaction Positive Preoperative Patients: Female Predominance. Ann Orthop Musculoskelet Disord. 2021; 4(1): 1027.