Introduction: Medial open wedge high tibial osteotomy (MOWHTO) is one of the modalities to treat unicompartmental knee osteoarthritis (KO). Many studies have shown good outcomes of MOWHTO, but there are no published series of Malaysian patients. The aim of this study is to determine the outcome of MOWHTO in primary medial compartment KO in a university teaching hospital in Malaysia. Materials and methods: This is a retrospective study of patients who underwent MOWHTO in our Joint Reconstruction Unit between 2017 and 2022 with a minimum of 12 months follow-up. Results: Data from a total of 15 knees were reviewed. The mean age of patients was 41.8 years, and the mean BMI was 31.7. The mean Kellgren-Lawrence (KL) osteoarthritis grade was 2.87 (±0.52). The mean hip knee angle (HKA) preoperatively was 12.26° varus and post-operatively was 3.33° valgus. Mean correction of HKA was 13.59°. The results revealed an improvement in all patients, as observed from the significant mean difference between pre-operative (38.53) and post-operative (77.60) Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome (KOOS) (p-value<0.001) scores. Patients who were above 50 years old showed a significantly better improvement in KOOS score compared to those below 50 (p-value <0.05). There was no significant difference observed between BMI and KOOS score improvement (Fstat=0.580, p-value >0.05). Conclusion: MOWHTO is a good treatment option in medial compartment primary KO with varus deformity among Malaysian population. A larger sample size with a longer follow-up period is needed to draw a definitive conclusion

Introduction: Laboratory turnaround time (LTAT) is considered a reliable indicator of the quality and efficiency of a laboratory’s service. LTAT achievement, particularly of urgent tests, remains unsatisfactory and challenging in many clinical laboratories especially in tertiary health care centres with high workload and restricted resources. The unresolved issue of unsatisfactory urgent renal profile (RP) LTAT below the standard performance goal prompted our interest to improve laboratory’s handling of urgent test request. We thus implemented the Lean principle in the management of urgent test requests using urgent RP as the test model. Methods: The implementation of laboratory Lean involved 4 steps process; (1) Development of burning platform for change (2) Identification of waste (3) Planning and implementation of control measures (4) Measuring, monitoring, and sustaining the improvement. Urgent RP LTAT and the percentage of the request met the time requirement determined based on the data extracted from laboratory information system (LIS) before and after the implementation of Lean was compared to assess the effectiveness. Results: Urgent RP LTAT after the implementation of Lean was reduced i.e 35 min (before) vs 31 min (after), with the percentage of LTAT met the time requirement was significantly increased above the set target i.e 82.8% (before) to 93.5% (after) with P-value = 0.001. Conclusion: Implementation of innovation using Lean management has significantly improved urgent RP LTAT achievement, thus optimised urgent test management in our Chemical Pathology laboratory. Lean is a strongly recommended strategy to improve urgent test LTAT especially in laboratories with restricted resources.