I resisted the temptation to use a photo from the Wikipedia article on breast implants to illustrate this diary. I also decide not to use the word “boobs” in the title although it does have two very different meanings, one common slang and the other with a formal definition.
Florida recorded the highest-ever daily COVID-19 case count, more than 21,000. “The Florida Hospital Association said Friday that statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations are nearing last year’s peak, and one of the state’s largest health care systems, AdventHealth’s Central Florida Division, this week advised it would no longer be conducting nonemergency surgeries in order to free up resources for COVID-19 patients.”
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted mandatory mask mandates and vaccine requirements, and along with the state Legislature, has limited local officials’ ability to impose restrictions meant to stop the spread of COVID-19. DeSantis on Friday barred school districts from requiring students to wear masks when classes resume next month.
Ref.
This is how Wikipedia defines elective surgery:
Elective surgery or elective procedure is surgery that is scheduled in advance because it does not involve a medical emergency. Semi-elective surgery is a surgery that must be done to preserve the patient's life, but does not need to be performed immediately.
By contrast, an urgent surgery is one that can wait until the patient is medically stable, but should generally be done within 2 days, and an emergency surgery is one that must be performed without delay; the patient has no choice other than immediate surgery if permanent disability or death is to be avoided.
Most surgeries necessary for medical reasons are elective, that is, scheduled at a time to suit the surgeon, hospital, and patient. These include inguinal hernia surgery, cataract surgery, mastectomy for breast cancer, and the donation of a kidney by a living donor.
Elective surgeries include all optional surgeries performed for non-medical reasons. This includes cosmetic surgery, such as facelifts, breast implants, liposuction, and breast reduction, which aim to subjectively improve a patient's physical appearance. LASIK procedures can be elective, where a patient weighs the risks against increased quality of life expectations. LASIK is currently the top elective surgery in the United States.
Of course Gov. DeSantis is pandering to the Trumpist base in all this.
In the metro areas with the highest concentration of plastic surgeons, Miami topped the list with the most plastic surgeons, 8.3 per 100,000 residents. It even beat out Los Angeles which came in at No. 2 with 7.6 plastic surgeons per capita. Ref.
Florida has lots of residents who are real boobs. I ventured to guess that lots of women there have had breast implants too. I checked it out and Miami is number 10 in the country.
Salt Lake City is number one. “Plastic surgeons seem to think that another main reason for the interest in breast implants is that there are more pregnancies in Utah than anywhere else with many young moms wanting to look their best after giving birth.”
I write the following not as a physician but based on the experiences of some of my family and friends:
Of course there are many true quality of life operations that will have to be postponed because of this. For example, surgeries that effect quality of life like orthopedic operations to enhance mobility and reduce pain.
I expect that the hospital officials will end up having to make difficult decisions about what is and isn’t an emergency procedure. For example, there are heart operations that may not be an emergency like those performed after a heart attack, but that still need to be done in a timely basis to prevent a heart attack. How does a medical panel decide how long a patient can wait to have a malignant tumor removed?
There are also painful conditions like gallstones which sometimes require surgery.
The politicized decisions of governors like DeSantis to minimize the dangers of Covid all stem from trying to appease a constituency brainwashed by Donald Trump and the media who served up lies about Covid.
The massive disruption to our nation’s hospital system was avoidable to some extent even before the vaccines if we had widespread masking and social distancing. Since the vaccines became widely available if a significant percentage of the population had gotten the shots our hospitals would be functioning as close to normally as possible considering the need to protect against Covid and treat those who did come down with it.
