Project description:BACKGROUND:Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has caused substantial disruptions in routine clinical care. Emerging data show that surgery in coronavirus disease (COVID)-positive cases can be associated with worsening of clinical outcomes and increased postoperative mortality. Hence, preoperative COVID-19 testing for all patients before elective surgery was implemented in our institution. MATERIALS AND METHODS:Two hundred and sixty-two asymptomatic cancer patients were preoperatively tested for COVID-19 using reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction technique with nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabbing. All negative patients were operated within 72?hours, and positive patients were quarantined for a minimum 14 days before re-swabbing. RESULTS:In our cohort, 21 of 262 (8.0%) asymptomatic preoperative patients, who were otherwise fit for surgery, tested positive. After adequate quarantine and a negative follow-up test report, 12 of 21 (57%) had an operation. No major postoperative morbidity due to COVID-19 was noted during the immediate postoperative period before discharge from the hospital. CONCLUSION:Routine preoperative COVID-19 testing was successful in identifying asymptomatic viral carriers. There was no incidence of symptomatic COVID-19 disease in the postoperative period, and there was no incidence of morbidity attributable to COVID-19. These data suggested a beneficial role for mandatory preoperative COVID-19 testing.
Project description:The last three years have been spent combating COVID-19, and governments have been seeking optimal solutions to minimize the negative impacts on societies. Although two types of testing have been performed for this-follow-up testing for those who had close contact with infected individuals and mass-testing of those with symptoms-the allocation of resources has been controversial. Mathematical models such as the susceptible, infectious, exposed, recovered, and dead (SEIRD) model have been developed to predict the spread of infection. However, these models do not consider the effects of testing characteristics and resource limitations. To determine the optimal testing strategy, we developed a testing-SEIRD model that depends on testing characteristics and limited resources. In this model, people who test positive are admitted to the hospital based on capacity and medical resources. Using this model, we examined the infection spread depending on the ratio of follow-up and mass-testing. The simulations demonstrated that the infection dynamics exhibit an all-or-none response as infection expands or extinguishes. Optimal and worst follow-up and mass-testing combinations were determined depending on the total resources and cost ratio of the two types of testing. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the cumulative deaths varied significantly by hundreds to thousands of times depending on the testing strategy, which is encouraging for policymakers. Therefore, our model might provide guidelines for testing strategies in the cases of recently emerging infectious diseases.
Project description:Objective: A considerable part of COVID-19 patients were found to be re-positive in the SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test after discharge. Early prediction of re-positive COVID-19 cases is of critical importance in determining the isolation period and developing clinical protocols. Materials and Methods: Ninety-one patients discharged from Wanzhou Three Gorges Central Hospital, Chongqing, China, from February 10, 2020 to March 3, 2020 were administered nasopharyngeal swab SARS-CoV-2 tests within 12-14 days, and 50 eligible patients (32 male and 18 female) with completed data were enrolled. Average age was 48 ± 11.5 years. All patients underwent non-enhanced chest CT on admission. A total of 568 radiomics features were extracted from the CT images, and 17 clinical factors were collected based on the medical record. Student's t-test and support vector machine-based recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE) method were used to determine an optimal subset of features for the discriminative model development. Results: After Student's t-test, 62 radiomics features showed significant inter-group differences (p < 0.05) between the re-positive and negative cases, and none of the clinical features showed significant differences. These significant features were further selected by SVM-RFE algorithm, and a more compact feature subset containing only two radiomics features was finally determined, achieving the best predictive performance with the accuracy and area under the curve of 72.6% and 0.773 for the identification of the re-positive case. Conclusion: The proposed radiomics method has preliminarily shown potential in identifying the re-positive cases among the recovered COVID-19 patients after discharge. More strategies are to be integrated into the current pipeline to improve its precision, and a larger database with multi-clinical enrollment is required to extensively verify its performance.
Project description:The immune mechanisms of long coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID) are not yet fully understood. We aimed to investigate the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-specific memory immune responses in discharged COVID-19 patients with and without long COVID symptoms. In this cross-sectional study, we included 1041 hospitalized COVID-19 patients with the original virus strain in Wuhan (China) 12 months after initial infection. We simultaneously conducted a questionnaire survey and collected peripheral blood samples from the participants. Based on the presence or absence of long COVID symptoms during the follow-up period, we divided the patients into 2 groups: a long COVID group comprising 480 individuals and a convalescent group comprising 561 individuals. Both groups underwent virus-specific immunological analyses, including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, interferon-γ-enzyme-linked immune absorbent spot, and intracellular cytokine staining. At 12 months after infection, 98.5% (1026/1041) of the patients were found to be seropositive and 93.3% (70/75) had detectable SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T cells. The long COVID group had significantly higher levels of receptor binding domain (RBD)-immunoglobulin G (IgG) levels, presented as OD450 values, than the convalescent controls (0.40 ± 0.22 vs 0.37 ± 0.20; P = .022). The magnitude of SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell responses did not differ significantly between groups, nor did the secretion function of the memory T cells. We did not observe a significant correlation between SARS-CoV-2-IgG and magnitude of memory T cells. This study revealed that long COVID patients had significantly higher levels of RBD-IgG antibodies when compared with convalescent controls. Nevertheless, we did not observe coordinated SARS-CoV-2-specific cellular immunity. As there may be multiple potential causes of long COVID, it is imperative to avoid adopting a "one-size-fits-all" approach to future treatment modalities.
Project description:BackgroundEmergency medical services (EMS) were the first point of contact for many COVID-19 patients during the pandemic. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the non-conveyance decision of a COVID-19 patient was more frequently associated with a new EMS call than direct ambulance transport to the hospital.MethodsAll confirmed COVID-19 patients with an EMS call within 14 days of symptom onset were included in the study. Patients were compared based on their prehospital transport decision (transport vs. non-conveyance). The primary endpoint was a new EMS call within 10 days leading to ambulance transport.ResultsA total of 1 286 patients met the study criteria; of these, 605 (47.0%) were male with a mean (standard deviation [SD]) age of 50.5 (SD 19.3) years. The most common dispatch codes were dyspnea in 656 (51.0%) and malaise in 364 (28.3%) calls. High-priority dispatch was used in 220 (17.1%) cases. After prehospital evaluation, 586 (45.6%) patients were discharged at the scene. Oxygen was given to 159 (12.4%) patients, of whom all but one were transported. A new EMS call leading to ambulance transport was observed in 133 (10.3%) cases; of these, 40 (30.1%) were in the group primarily transported and 93 (69.9%) were among the patients who were primarily discharged at the scene (p<.001). There were no significant differences in past medical history, presence of abnormal vital signs, or total NEWS score. Supplemental oxygen was given to 33 (24.8%) patients; 3 (2.3%) patients received other medications.ConclusionNearly half of all prehospital COVID-19 patients could be discharged at the scene. Approximately every sixth of these had a new EMS call and ambulance transport within the following 10 days. No significant deterioration was seen among patients primarily discharged at the scene. EMS was able to safely adjust its performance during the first pandemic wave to avoid ED overcrowding.
Project description:BackgroundEmergency medical services (EMS) were the first point of contact for many COVID-19 patients during the pandemic. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the non-conveyance decision of a COVID-19 patient was more frequently associated with a new EMS call than direct ambulance transport to the hospital.MethodsAll confirmed COVID-19 patients with an EMS call within 14 days of symptom onset were included in the study. Patients were compared based on their prehospital transport decision (transport vs. non-conveyance). The primary endpoint was a new EMS call within 10 days leading to ambulance transport.ResultsA total of 1 286 patients met the study criteria; of these, 605 (47.0%) were male with a mean (standard deviation [SD]) age of 50.5 (SD 19.3) years. The most common dispatch codes were dyspnea in 656 (51.0%) and malaise in 364 (28.3%) calls. High-priority dispatch was used in 220 (17.1%) cases. After prehospital evaluation, 586 (45.6%) patients were discharged at the scene. Oxygen was given to 159 (12.4%) patients, of whom all but one were transported. A new EMS call leading to ambulance transport was observed in 133 (10.3%) cases; of these, 40 (30.1%) were in the group primarily transported and 93 (69.9%) were among the patients who were primarily discharged at the scene (p<.001). There were no significant differences in past medical history, presence of abnormal vital signs, or total NEWS score. Supplemental oxygen was given to 33 (24.8%) patients; 3 (2.3%) patients received other medications.ConclusionNearly half of all prehospital COVID-19 patients could be discharged at the scene. Approximately every sixth of these had a new EMS call and ambulance transport within the following 10 days. No significant deterioration was seen among patients primarily discharged at the scene. EMS was able to safely adjust its performance during the first pandemic wave to avoid ED overcrowding.
Project description:BackgroundCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has emerged as a major global health threat with a great number of deaths worldwide. Despite abundant data on that many COVID-19 patients also displayed kidney disease, there is limited information available about the recovery of kidney disease after discharge.MethodsRetrospective and prospective cohort study to patients with new-onset kidney disease during the COVID-19 hospitalization, admitted between January 28 to February 26, 2020. The median follow-up was 4 months after discharge. The follow-up patients were divided into the recovery group and non-recovery group. Descriptive statistics and between-groups comparison were used.ResultsIn total, 143 discharged patients with new-onset kidney disease during the COVID-19 hospitalization were included. Patients had a median age was 64 (IQR, 51-70) years, and 59.4% of patients were men. During 4-months median follow-up, 91% (130 of 143) patients recovered from kidney disease, and 9% (13 of 143) patients haven't recovered. The median age of patients in the non-recovery group was 72 years, which was significantly higher than the median age of 62 years in the recovery group. Discharge serum creatinine was significantly higher in the non-recovery group than in the recovery group.ConclusionsMost of the new-onset kidney diseases during hospitalization of COVID-19 patients recovered 4 months after discharge. We recommend that COVID-19 patients with new-onset kidney disease be followed after discharge to assess kidney recovery, especially elderly patients or patients with high discharge creatinine.