Annals of surgery
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Outcomes after Tracheostomy in COVID-19 Patients.
To determine the outcomes of patients undergoing tracheostomy for COVID-19 and of healthcare workers performing these procedures. ⋯ Alterations to tracheostomy practices and processes were successfully instituted. Following these steps, tracheostomy in COVID-19 intubated patients seems safe for both patients and healthcare workers performing the procedure.
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Multicenter Study
Patient-derived Organoid Pharmacotyping is a Clinically Tractable Strategy for Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer.
PDAC patients who undergo surgical resection and receive effective chemotherapy have the best chance of long-term survival. Unfortunately, we lack predictive biomarkers to guide optimal systemic treatment. Ex-vivo generation of PDO for pharmacotyping may serve as predictive biomarkers in PDAC. The goal of the current study was to demonstrate the clinical feasibility of a PDO-guided precision medicine framework of care. ⋯ Rapid development of PDOs from patients undergoing surgery for PDAC is eminently feasible within the perioperative recovery period, enabling the potential for pharmacotyping to guide postoperative adjuvant chemotherapeutic selection. Studies validating PDOs as a promising predictive biomarker are ongoing.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
African Americans Struggle With the Current COVID-19.
Our study aims to explore the differential impact of this pandemic on clinical presentations and outcomes in African Americans (AAs) compared to white patients. ⋯ AAs present with more advanced disease and eventually have worse outcomes from COVID-19 infection. Future studies are warranted for further investigations that should impact the need for providing additional resources to the AA communities.
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Multicenter Study
Making Every Liver Count: Increased Transplant Yield of Donor Livers Through Normothermic Machine Perfusion.
Normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) enables optimized ex-vivo preservation of a donor liver in a normal physiologic state. The impact of this emerging technology on donor liver utilization has yet to be assessed. ⋯ NMP reduces the discard rate of procured livers despite its use in donors traditionally considered of more marginal quality. NMP maintains excellent graft and patient survival. Broader application of NMP technology holds the potential to generate a significant number of additional liver grafts for transplantation every year, thus greatly reducing the nationwide disparity between supply and demand.