Articles: coronavirus.
-
During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals are at the forefront of managing the highly infectious coronavirus. As the most common route of transmission is via aerosols and droplet inhalation, it is critical for healthcare workers to have the correct personal protective equipment (PPE) including gowns, masks and goggles. Surgical masks are not effective in preventing the influenza and SARS, so they are unlikely to be able to resist contaminated aerosols from entering the respiratory system. ⋯ Various types of respirators are used in healthcare settings, such as half-mask filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) and powered air-purifying respirators (PAPRs). The most commonly used FFR is the N95 disposable respirator, which is tight fitting and has a 95% or above particle filtering efficiency for a median particle size of 0.3 µm. This review discusses respirators, their purpose, types, clinical efficiency and proper donning and doffing techniques.
-
J Shoulder Elbow Surg · Aug 2020
Patient outcomes after humeral fracture surgery during the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain.
The global spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has profoundly affected the way we conduct our health care practices. The goal of this paper is to report the outcomes of 11 patients who underwent humeral fracture surgery in the first few weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain. ⋯ Although humeral fractures were not the most frequent fractures during this outbreak, some required surgery. With good preoperative management that included reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction for COVID-19 and chest radiographs, protective measurements for the surgical team, and rapid discharge of the patients, we were able to operate on 11 humeral fractures with no COVID-19 nosocomial intrahospital infection in the patients or in the shoulder surgeons who performed the surgeries.
-
In China, the doubling time of the coronavirus disease epidemic by province increased during January 20-February 9, 2020. Doubling time estimates ranged from 1.4 (95% CI 1.2-2.0) days for Hunan Province to 3.1 (95% CI 2.1-4.8) days for Xinjiang Province. The estimate for Hubei Province was 2.5 (95% CI 2.4-2.6) days.
-
Emergency measures to treat patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and contain the outbreak is the main priority in each of our hospitals; however, these measures are likely to result in collateral damage among patients with other acute diseases. Here, we investigate whether the COVID-19 pandemic affects acute stroke care through interruptions in the stroke chain of survival. ⋯ The COVID-19 pandemic is disruptive for acute stroke pathways. Bottlenecks in the access and delivery of patients to our secured stroke centers are among the main challenges. It is critical to encourage patients to continue seeking emergency care if experiencing acute stroke symptoms and to ensure that emergency professionals continue to use stroke code activation and telestroke networks.