Annals of translational medicine
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Glucocorticoids are widely used in the treatment of various pulmonary inflammatory diseases, but they are also often accompanied by significant adverse reactions. Published guidelines point out that low dose and short duration systemic glucocorticoid therapy may be considered for patients with rapidly progressing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) while the evidence is still limited. ⋯ Glucocorticoid therapy was found to reduce the duration of fever, but not mortality, duration of hospitalization or lung inflammation absorption. Long-term use of high-dose glucocorticoids increased the risk of adverse reactions such as coinfections, so routine use of systemic glucocorticoids for patients with COVID-19 cannot be recommend.
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A recent cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan (China) is known to be caused by a novel beta-coronavirus named the corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and can be spread through human-to-human transmission. ⋯ The overall incubation period in this cohort of imported confirmed COVID-19 patients was longer than that in Wuhan, mostly infecting older men. The disease onset of imported COVID-19 infection was occult, and the clinical symptoms were usually mild, mostly presenting as low fever, fatigue, light cough, and mild dyspnea.
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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first identified in Wuhan, China on December 2019 in patients presenting with atypical pneumonia. Although 'city-lockdown' policy reduced the spatial spreading of the COVID-19, the city-level outbreaks within each city remain a major concern to be addressed. The local or regional level disease control mainly depends on individuals self-administered infection prevention actions. The contradiction between choice of taking infection prevention actions or not makes the elimination difficult under a voluntary acting scheme, and represents a clash between the optimal choice of action for the individual interest and group interests. ⋯ Through an imitating social learning process, individual-level behavioral change on taking infection prevention actions have the potentials to significantly reduce the COVID-19 outbreak in terms of size and timing at city-level. Timely and substantially resources and supports for improving the willingness-to-act and conducts of self-administered infection prevention actions are recommended to reduce to the COVID-19 associated risks.
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To evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of Densely Connected Convolutional Networks (DenseNet) for detection of COVID-19 features on high resolution computed tomography (HRCT). ⋯ Deep learning (DL) with DenseNet can accurately classify COVID-19 on HRCT with an AUC of 0.98, which can reduce the miss diagnosis rate (combined with radiologists' evaluation) and radiologists' workload.
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This study was conducted retrospectively to investigate the survival of patients undergoing gastric cancer surgery with epidural combined with general anesthesia (EGA) and general anesthesia alone (GA). ⋯ In summary, patients might benefit from EGA as a result of better analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects, fewer postoperative complications, higher safety, and a lower rate of metastasis and recurrence is conducive to postoperative recovery in patients with gastric cancer.