The American journal of emergency medicine
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The COVID-19 pandemic has inundated emergency departments with patients exhibiting a wide array of symptomatology and clinical manifestations. We aim to evaluate the chief complaints of patients presenting to our ED with either suspected or confirmed COVID-19 to better understand the clinical presentation of this pandemic. ⋯ Our research highlights an important aspect of the evaluation and management of COVID-19 patients in the emergency department. Our study identified most common chief complaints, chief complaints differences across age groups, and 7 distinct groups of COVID-19 symptoms. This large-scale effort to classify the most commonly reported symptoms in ED patients provides public health officials and providers with data for identifying COVID-19 cases.
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Many laboratory indicators form a skewed distribution with outliers in critically ill patients with COVID-19, for which robust methods are needed to precisely determine and quantify fatality risk factors. ⋯ Laboratory indexes provided reliable information on mortality in critically ill patients with COVID-19, which might help improve clinical prediction and treatment at an early stage.
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We report a case of neurogenic pulmonary edema in a patient who sustained a severe traumatic brain injury in a motorbike accident and review the current literature with regards to the management of neurogenic pulmonary edema (NPE). ⋯ Neurogenic pulmonary edema is a potentially life-threatening complication of severe brain injury and should be recognised early to facilitate management.