Wide awake local anesthesia no tourniquet technique in hand surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic - personal experience

Abstract

Short-time exposure of the patient to the hospital environment and the significantly lower costs make WALANT technique a “gold-standard” anesthesia in hand surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Material and methods: We studied a group of 180 patients treated for acute and chronic conditions during the first 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. A statistical analysis was conducted in order to demonstrate the efficacy and usefulness of the WALANT technique. Results: The average length of hospital stay was 118.05 minutes, the mean time of onset of local anesthesia was 12.79 minutes, the average patient waiting time from admission to surgery was 15.72 minutes. We used ANOVA regression, establishing CI 95% and significance F of 95%. A p-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Conclusions: Using WALANT technique the length of hospital stays and implicitly the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2 decreases and also the costs are lower, surgical care is good, and patient satisfaction is high.