Plos One
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
A phenomenological study on the lived experiences of families of ICU patients, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Family-centered care of ICU patients is increasingly recommended as it is believed to have effect on family members' psychosocial status and patient outcomes. Defining the nature and extent of families' involvement in a given health care environment for different stakeholders is a challenge. Understanding the lived experiences of families of ICU patients would help strategize on how to better engage family members for improved ICU care processes and outcomes. ⋯ The study gave an insight on the multiple and interrelated challenges faced by families of ICU patients admitted in the hospitals of Addis Ababa. Further contextualized interpretation of their experiences revealed that families were somehow in a state of despair and they implicitly need the ICU care for their family member be ended irrespective of the potential clinical consequences on the patient. The philosophy of family-centered care be advocated in hospitals. The study result affirms the need to include family members during nursing assessment of patients in ICUs and also offers the basis for guidelines development on informational support to the families of the patients hospitalized in ICUs.
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Observational Study
Characterisation of 22445 patients attending UK emergency departments with suspected COVID-19 infection: Observational cohort study.
Hospital emergency departments play a crucial role in the initial assessment and management of suspected COVID-19 infection. This needs to be guided by studies of people presenting with suspected COVID-19, including those admitted and discharged, and those who do not ultimately have COVID-19 confirmed. We aimed to characterise patients attending emergency departments with suspected COVID-19, including subgroups based on sex, ethnicity and COVID-19 test results. ⋯ ISRCTN registry, ISRCTN56149622, http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN28342533.
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Comparative Study
Propofol-based total intravenous anesthesia is associated with better survival than desflurane anesthesia in robot-assisted radical prostatectomy.
Previous researches have shown that anesthetic techniques may influence the patients' outcomes after cancer surgery. Here, we studied the relationship between the type of anesthetic techniques and patients' outcomes following elective robot-assisted radical prostatectomy. ⋯ Propofol anesthesia was associated with improved overall survival in robot-assisted radical prostatectomy compared with desflurane anesthesia. In addition, patients under propofol anesthesia had less postoperative biochemical recurrence.
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Observational Study
Characterizing heart failure with preserved and reduced ejection fraction: An imaging and plasma biomarker approach.
The pathophysiology of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) remains incompletely defined. We aimed to characterize HFpEF compared to heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and asymptomatic hypertensive or non-hypertensive controls. ⋯ HFpEF is a distinct pathophysiological entity compared to age- and sex-matched HFrEF and controls. HFpEF and HFrEF are associated with similar adverse outcomes. Inflammation is common in both HF phenotypes but cardiomyocyte stretch/stress is greater in HFrEF.
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This work applies a data-driven coding method for prediction of the COVID-19 spreading profile in any given population that shows an initial phase of epidemic progression. Based on the historical data collected for COVID-19 spreading in 367 cities in China and the set of parameters of the augmented Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Removed (SEIR) model obtained for each city, a set of profile codes representing a variety of transmission mechanisms and contact topologies is formed. By comparing the data of an early outbreak of a given population with the complete set of historical profiles, the best fit profiles are selected and the corresponding sets of profile codes are used for prediction of the future progression of the epidemic in that population. Application of the method to the data collected for South Korea, Italy and Iran shows that peaks of infection cases are expected to occur before mid April, the end of March and the end of May 2020, and that the percentage of population infected in each city or region will be less than 0.01%, 0.5% and 0.5%, for South Korea, Italy and Iran, respectively.