Plos One
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Lung-protective properties of expiratory flow-initiated pressure-controlled inverse ratio ventilation: A randomised controlled trial.
Expiratory flow-initiated pressure-controlled inverse ratio ventilation (EF-initiated PC-IRV) reduces physiological dead space. We hypothesised that EF-initiated PC-IRV would be lung protective compared with volume-controlled ventilation (VCV). ⋯ There were no differences in the lung-protective properties between the two ventilatory strategies. However, EF-initiated PC-IRV reduced physiological dead space rate; thus, it may be useful for reducing the ventilatory volume that is necessary to maintain normocapnia in patients with low forced vital capacity (% predicted) during robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy.
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Postoperative anaemia might be a risk factor for postoperative delirium and prolonged hospital stay: A secondary analysis of a prospective cohort study.
Postoperative anaemia is a frequent surgical complication and in contrast to preoperative anaemia has not been validated in relation to mortality, morbidity and its associated health economic effect. Postoperative anaemia can predispose postoperative delirium through impairment of cerebral oxygenation. The aim of this secondary analysis is to investigate the association of postoperative anaemia in accordance with the sex specific World Health Organization definition of anaemia to postoperative delirium and its impact on the duration of hospital stay. ⋯ The study results reveal that postoperative anaemia is not only a frequent postsurgical complication with an incidence probability of almost 50%, but could also be associated with a postoperative delirium and a prolonged hospitalisation.
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Despite evidence of socio-demographic disparities in outcomes of COVID-19, little is known about characteristics and clinical outcomes of patients admitted to public hospitals during the COVID-19 outbreak. ⋯ COVID-19 demonstrated severe morbidity and mortality in critically ill patients. Modifications in care delivery outside the ICU allowed the hospital to effectively care for a surge of critically ill and severely hypoxic patients.
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Observational Study
Evaluation of performance of two SARS-CoV-2 Rapid IgM-IgG combined antibody tests on capillary whole blood samples from the fingertip.
The SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2) is responsible for the infectious respiratory disease called COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease 2019). In response to the growing COVID-19 pandemic, point-of-care (POC) tests have been developed to detect specific antibodies, IgG and IgM, to SARS-CoV-2 virus in human whole blood. We conducted a prospective observational study to evaluate the performance of two POC tests, COVID-PRESTO® and COVID-DUO®, compared to the gold standard, RT-PCR (real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction). ⋯ COVID-PRESTO® and DUO® POC tests turned out to be very specific (none false positive) and to be sensitive enough after 15 days from onset of symptom. These easy to use IgG/IgM combined test kits are the first ones allowing a screening with CWB sample, by typing from a finger prick. These rapid tests are particularly interesting for screening in low resource settings.
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The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly evolved into an unprecedented crisis. The susceptible-infectious-removed (SIR) model and its variants have been used for modeling the pandemic. However, time-independent parameters in the classical models may not capture the dynamic transmission and removal processes, governed by virus containment strategies taken at various phases of the epidemic. ⋯ We propose a Poisson model with time-dependent transmission and removal rates to account for possible random errors in reporting and estimate a time-dependent disease reproduction number, which may reflect the effectiveness of virus control strategies. We apply our method to study the pandemic in several severely impacted countries, and analyze and forecast the evolving spread of the coronavirus. We have developed an interactive web application to facilitate readers' use of our method.