The American journal of emergency medicine
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
The impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on ED visits in Lebanon.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread globally, emergency departments (ED) around the world began to report significant drops in volumes and changes in disease patterns. During the early COVID-19 period, Lebanon followed an aggressive containment approach to halt the spread of the disease. ⋯ ED visits dropped significantly during the COVID-19 containment period. Understanding the trends of changes in disease entities is important for ED staffing purposes during the pandemic and the varying containment efforts. While stringent lockdown measures were associated with drops in ED visits, understanding the reason behind these drops, specifically whether behavioral or related to true drops in disease prevalence, needs further exploration.
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Multicenter Study
First-to-second antibiotic delay and hospital mortality among emergency department patients with suspected sepsis.
To evaluate whether delay between the first and second antibiotic administered for suspected sepsis is associated with hospital mortality. ⋯ First-to-second antibiotic delay of greater than one hour was associated with an increased risk of hospital death among patients meeting criteria for septic shock but not all patients with suspected sepsis. Tracking and improving first-to-second antibiotic delays may be considered in septic shock.
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Multicenter Study
Predictors of readmission requiring hospitalization after discharge from emergency departments in patients with COVID-19.
Little is known on prevalence of early return hospital admission of subjects with COVID-19 previously evaluated and discharged from emergency departments (EDs). This study aims to describe readmission rate within 14 days of patients with COVID-19 discharged from ED and to identify predictors of return hospital admission. ⋯ Several factors are associated with 14-day return hospital admission in COVID-19 subjects. These should be considered when assessing discharge risk in ED clinical practice.
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Use of high-flow nasal cannula and noninvasive ventilation in patients with COVID-19: A multicenter observational study.
The use of high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) and noninvasive ventilation (NIV) in patients with COVID-19 is debated. ⋯ In critically ill patients with COVID-19 who used HFNC and NIV as first-line therapy, the duration of HFNC + NIV, intubation rate and mortality did not differ between two groups. And no medical staff got nosocomial infection during this study.
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Multicenter Study
Inflammatory markers are poorly predictive of clinical outcomes among hospitalized patients with COVID-19.
Inflammatory markers are often elevated in patients with COVID-19. The objective of this study is to assess the prognostic capability of these tests in predicting clinical outcomes. ⋯ Inflammatory markers drawn within 48 h of arrival, though often correlated with clinical outcomes, are not individually highly predictive of which patients in a predominantly older and minority population will die or require intubation, RRT, or ICU admission.