Journal of investigative medicine : the official publication of the American Federation for Clinical Research
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As of February 2, 2021, the USA has 26,431,799 reported COVID-19 cases with 446,744 deaths. A high mortality rate (15%-40%) was reported among hospitalized patients with COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic. However, data regarding variation in COVID-19-related mortality and severity of illness among hospitalized patients with COVID-19 are heterogeneous. ⋯ In-hospital mortality during the second wave was lower (5.9%) compared with the first wave (15.5%). At the last follow-up date, 86.1% were discharged alive from the hospital, 5.9% died and 7.9% were still in the hospital. Multivariate logistic regression showed higher odds of mortality were associated with higher age and elevated lactate dehydrogenase peak.
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Observational Study
Biomarker-based score for predicting in-hospital mortality of children admitted to the intensive care unit.
This study aims to establish a new scoring system based on biomarkers for predicting in-hospital mortality of children admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). The biomarkers were chosen using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO)-logistic regression in this observational case-control study. The performance of the new predictive model was evaluated by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). ⋯ The calculated ORs showed a trend that higher scores indicated higher risk of death (p value for trend <0.001). In summary, this study develops and validates a totally biomarker-based new score to predict in-hospital mortality for pediatric patients admitted to PICU. More attention and more positive care and treatment should be given to children with a higher score.
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Transnasal swab testing for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 is well established. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advocates swabbing either of the anterior nares, middle turbinate, or nasopharynx for specimen collection depending on available local resources. The purpose of this review is to investigate complications related to transnasal SARS-CoV-2 testing with specific attention to specimen collection site and swab approach. The literature demonstrates that while nasopharyngeal swabbing is associated with an increased risk of complications, it should remain the gold-standard test due to greater diagnostic accuracy relative to anterior nasal and middle turbinate swabs.