Irish journal of medical science
-
As the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to spread across countries, the need for innovative measures to provide high-quality patient care and manage its spread has become more imperative. Software-based systems such as medical software applications could provide valuable suggestion on health-related information to physicians towards improving quality of life, especially for outpatients (e.g., elderly, immunosuppressed, pregnant women). ⋯ More importantly, findings present factors that impact adoption of telemedicine. The findings suggest that telemedicine and virtual software are capable of decreasing emergency room visits, safeguarding healthcare resources, and lessening the spread of COVID-19 by remotely treating patients during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
-
Multicenter Study
The workload distribution of acute stroke CT imaging in a level three hospital in Ireland.
Interventions for acute ischaemic stroke require brain imaging. Computerised tomography (CT) scanning is the most common method used. In this study, the aim was to investigate the CT workload of acute stroke in an Irish level 3 hospital, seeing approximately 200 acute strokes per year. ⋯ Acute stroke imaging constitutes a relatively small portion of the out-of-hour CT workload. Due to the emergency status of these scans, providing an acute stroke radiology service requires radiology staff to operate with extremely short response times 24 h a day.
-
Multicenter Study
Head and neck injury in major trauma in Ireland: a multicentre retrospective analysis of patterns and surgical workload.
Head and neck injuries are common in major trauma patients, but the prevalence is poorly documented in the literature. This study aims to investigate this further, particularly in the context of increasing development of Irish and European trauma systems. ⋯ A substantial number of Irish major trauma patients of all ages and genders sustain some form of head and neck injury. It produces significant injury and surgical workload involving input from multiple disciplines.
-
Cancer is a major burden on the healthcare system, and new therapies are needed. Recently, the development of immunotherapies, which aim to boost or use the immune system, or its constituents, as a tool to fight malignant cells, has provided a major new tool in the arsenal of clinicians and has revolutionized the treatment of many cancers. ⋯ The ensuing years have seen two further cellular immunotherapies gain FDA approval: tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) and axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta). This review will give an overview of the principles of immunotherapies before focusing on the major forms of cellular immunotherapies individually, T cell-based, natural killer (NK) cell-based and dendritic cell (DC)-based, as well as detailing some of the clinical trials relevant to each therapy.
-
Irish health services have been repurposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Critical care services have been re-focused on the management of COVID-19 patients. This presents a major challenge for specialities such as cardiothoracic surgery that are reliant on intensive care unit (ICU) resources. ⋯ In March and April of 2020, the spread of COVID-19 and the resultant focus on its management resulted in a reduction in cardiothoracic surgery service delivery.