The Medico-legal journal
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The Medico-legal journal · Nov 2020
The medico-legal implications in medical malpractice claims during Covid-19 pandemic: Increase or trend reversal?
The Covid-19 pandemic caused a marked increase in admissions to intensive care units. The critically ill patients' condition from the infection resulted in their deaths. The healthcare facilities have got into trouble because of the pandemic. ⋯ This situation has reached Sicily, where the Prosecutor's Office of Palermo has opened an inquiry against an Extended Care Unit. Simultaneously, the Covid-19 pandemic may change patients' attitudes towards healthcare professionals, who are risking their lives daily. So the Italian medico-legal community is debating these questions, with one last pending question remaining: is the number of medico-legal claims likely to increase or trend down?
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Viral sepsis is rare, and its real incidence is not known. SARS-CoV-2 infection causes the release of a significant amount of pro-inflammatory cytokines that aggravates interstitial pneumonia and evolves in viral sepsis with prominent hypercoagulability. We believe it is useful and advisable to establish early immunomodulator therapy and the prophylaxis anticoagulant therapy should be rethought.
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The Medico-legal journal · Jul 2020
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on domestic violence: The dark side of home isolation during quarantine.
Domestic violence is a global public health problem. It takes many different forms and leads to significant physical and psychological consequences for the victim and the whole family. Situations that may prompt episodes of violence in the family include stress, emotional disappointment, economic factors, bad and cramped housing, and alcohol or drug abuse. How does the government's forced home isolation to contain Covid-19 infections impact on this type of abuse? Numerous articles have reported a decrease in reports of domestic violence since quarantine began but how reliable is these data? Is it a potential wake-up call for public institutions? We discuss the risks associated with quarantine measures during the pandemic and suggest the measures to prevent and improve the reporting of abuse cases.
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The Medico-legal journal · Jul 2020
Are there positive lessons for Italy's NHS resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic?
The authors evaluate the importance of prevention measures and health care from their own experience and briefly analyse the factors that may have contributed to the rapid spread of Covid-19 in Italy, and hope this will feed into appropriate and new and improved health policies.