ObjectiveTo systematically review the impact of ACEI/ARB (angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor/ angiotensin receptor antagonist) treatment on the clinical outcomes of Chinese patients with COVID-19 infections. MethodsPubMed, EMbase, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, CNKI, WanFang Data, and VIP databases were electronically searched to collect cohort studies on the impact of the treatment with ACEI/ARB on the clinical outcomes of Chinese patients with COVID-19 infections from January 2020 to January 2022. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data, and assessed the risk of bias of the included studies. Then, meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. ResultsA total of 17 cohort studies involving 4 912 subjects were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that patients who were prescribed ACEI/ARB had shorter hospital stays (SMD=−0.28, 95%CI −0.46 to −0.11, P=0.002) and a lower mortality rate (OR=0.47, 95%CI 0.36 to 0.62, P<0.000 01) than patients who did not take ACEI/ARB. ConclusionCurrent evidence shows that the use of ACEI/ARB drugs can improve the clinical prognosis of Chinese patients with COVID-19 infections. Due to the limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high-quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.
Objective To compare the clinical efficacy and safety of high-flow nasal cannula oxygen therapy (HFNC) and non-invasive ventilation (NIV) in treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) induced by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Methods Sixty-eight patients with ARDS induced by COVID-19 in Wuhan Concorde Red Cross Hospital form January 25, 2020 to March 10, 2020 were included in the study. They were divided into an HFNC group (n=36) and an NIV group (n=36) according to the treatment. All patients received basic routine treatment, antiviral treatment and prevention therapy of secondary infection. The HFNC group received high-flow nasal cannula oxygen therapy, and the NIV group received NIV therapy. Then respiration and circulation parameters, comfort and tolerance, complications were compared between the two groups. Results After treatment for 3 days, 1 week, and 2 weeks in all patients with COVID-19 induced ARDS, respiratory rate (RR) was lower than that before therapy, arterial partial pressure of oxygen (PaO2), pulse oxygen saturation (SpO2), PaO2/FiO2 were higher than those before therapy (P<0.05), and therapeutic effect was time-dependent. But there was no significant difference of RR, PaO2, SpO2, PaO2/FiO2 between the HFNC group and the NIV group at different time points (P>0.05). After treatment for 2 weeks, the HFNC group patients' comfort, difficulty breathing, tolerance score were lower than the NIV group (P<0.05, P<0.01), the incidence rate of gastric distension and dry mouth etc. was lower than that in the NIV group (11.11% vs. 37.50%, P<0.05). There was no significant difference in rate of invasive mechanical ventilation or mortality between the two groups (P>0.05). Conclusions HFNC and NIV can improve respiratory and circulatory parameters of patients with COVID-19 induced ARDS. HFNC has better comfort and tolerance, and can reduce related complications.
The scientific research on prevention and control of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been a major and urgent task, of which clinical trials occupy a pivotal position in the entire prevention and control system. 204 relative clinical trials of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) have been registered on Chinese Clinical Trial Registry. Through the analysis of all online public protocols of registered trials, it is found that the clinical studies of TCM in China showed lack of research foundation, tight time and heavy tasks, difficult clinical implementation, and disturbance by changes of the epidemic status. Based on these characteristics, this paper put forward several thoughts and suggestions on the quality management and design improvement for clinical trials of TCM preventing and treating COVID-19, in order to improve the quality of clinical trials in China, provide effective supports for the public health decision-making on the epidemic, and also give a reference for the prevention and control of epidemics in the future.
Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an acute respiratory infectious disease with strong contagiousness, strong variability, and long incubation period. The probability of misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis can be significantly decreased with the use of automatic segmentation of COVID-19 lesions based on computed tomography images, which helps doctors in rapid diagnosis and precise treatment. This paper introduced the level set generalized Dice loss function (LGDL) in conjunction with the level set segmentation method based on COVID-19 lesion segmentation network and proposed a dual-path COVID-19 lesion segmentation network (Dual-SAUNet++) to address the pain points such as the complex symptoms of COVID-19 and the blurred boundaries that are challenging to segment. LGDL is an adaptive weight joint loss obtained by combining the generalized Dice loss of the mask path and the mean square error of the level set path. On the test set, the model achieved Dice similarity coefficient of (87.81 ± 10.86)%, intersection over union of (79.20 ± 14.58)%, sensitivity of (94.18 ± 13.56)%, specificity of (99.83 ± 0.43)% and Hausdorff distance of 18.29 ± 31.48 mm. Studies indicated that Dual-SAUNet++ has a great anti-noise capability and it can segment multi-scale lesions while simultaneously focusing on their area and border information. The method proposed in this paper assists doctors in judging the severity of COVID-19 infection by accurately segmenting the lesion, and provides a reliable basis for subsequent clinical treatment.
At present, there are few studies on patients with epilepsy (PWE) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), and the results of many studies are inconsistent. SARS-CoV-2 may cause new seizures through a variety of mechanisms, and the susceptibility and mortality of PWE to SARS-CoV-2 remains controversial. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, anxiety, depression and other psychological problems were common among epileptic patients. Clinicians providing telemedicine, telephone chat and video call can effectively reduce the risk of psychological disorders in PWE patients. At the same time, there are many interactions between antiepileptic drugs and various antiviral drugs, which should be carefully considered when using. Considering that the research results are few and many studies contradict each other, PWE and SARS-CoV-2 deserve further exploration in future studies.
Objective To evaluate the perioperative safety of lung surgery for patients with corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of the patients recovered from COVID-19 infection and received lung surgery from December 2022 to February 2023 in the Department of Thoracic Surgery at Beijing Hospital. Patients who received lung surgery and without COVID-19 at the same time were selected as a control group. Perioperative data between the two groups were compared. Results A total of 103 patients were included with 44 males and 49 females at an average age of (62.2±12.1) years. All surgeries were performed by uniportal video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS). Among patients who recovered from COVID-19, 53 (51.5%) received lobectomy, 30 (29.1%) received segmentectomy, and 20 (19.4%) received wedge resection. The interval between diagnosis of infection and lung surgery was ≤1 month in 32 (31.1%) patients, and >1 month in 71 (68.9%) patients. The results of virus nucleic acid test for all patients before surgery were negative. A total of 13 (12.6%) patients had positive IgM, and 100 (97.1%) patients had positive IgG. A total of 20 patients experienced perioperative complications (13 patients with pulmonary air leakage, 3 patients with chylothorax, 2 patients with atrial fibrillation, and 2 patients with severe pulmonary complications). There was one perioperative death. Comparing the patients who recovered from COVID-19 with those without COVID-19, we found no statistical difference in perioperative outcomes including surgical duration, postoperative drainage, duration of thoracic tube, and duration of postoperative stay (P>0.05). There was no significant difference in perioperative complications between the two groups (P>0.05). Multivariable logistical regression analysis demonstrated that positive IgM before surgery (OR=7.319, 95%CI 1.669 to 32.103, P=0.008), and longer duration of surgery (OR=1.016, 95%CI 1.003 to 1.028, P=0.013) were independent risk factors of perioperative complications for patients who recovered from COVID-19. Conclusion It is safe for patients recover from COVID-19 to receive lung surgery when symptoms disappear and the nucleic acid test turn negative. However, positive COVID-19 IgM is an independent risk factor for perioperative complications. We suggest that lung surgery could be performed when the nucleic acid test and COVID-19 IgM are both negative for patients recover from COVID-19 infection.