Articles: pandemics.
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Critical care medicine · Apr 2023
Multicenter StudyPerceived Hospital Stress, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Activity, and Care Process Temporal Variance During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic threatened standard hospital operations. We sought to understand how this stress was perceived and manifested within individual hospitals and in relation to local viral activity. ⋯ During the COVID-19 pandemic, perceived care deviations were common and potentially avoidable patient harm was rare. Perceived hospital stress persisted for weeks after surges peaked.
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Comparative Study Observational Study
Shared Decision-Making in General Surgery: A Prospective Comparison of Telemedicine vs In-Person Visits.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has accelerated a shift toward virtual telemedicine appointments with surgeons. While this form of healthcare delivery has potential benefits for both patients and surgeons, the quality of these interactions remains largely unstudied. We hypothesize that telemedicine visits are associated with lower quality of shared decision-making. ⋯ In this large, prospective study, there does not appear to be a difference in quality of shared decision making in patients undergoing in-person vs telemedicine appointments.
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Review
Drug Repurposing and Observational Studies: The Case of Antivirals for the Treatment of COVID-19.
Remdesivir and molnupiravir were the only 2 repurposed antivirals that were approved for emergency use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both drugs received their emergency use authorization on the basis of a single industry-funded phase 3 trial, which was launched after evidence of in vitro activity against SARS-CoV-2. In contrast, for tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), little in vitro evidence was generated, no randomized trials for early treatment were done, and the drug was not considered for authorization. ⋯ Observational data in favor of TDF was systematically dismissed, even though no viable alternative explanations were proposed for the lower risk for severe COVID-19 among TDF users. Lessons learned from the TDF example during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic are described, and the use of observational clinical data to guide decisions about the launch of randomized trials during the next public health emergency is proposed. The goal is that gatekeepers of randomized trials make better use of the available observational evidence for the repurposing of drugs without commercial value.
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There has been much research into the mental health impact of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and how it is related to time-invariant individual characteristics. However, there is still a lack of research showing long-term trajectories of mental health across different stages of the pandemic. And little is known regarding the longitudinal association of time-varying factors with mental health outcomes. This study aimed to provide a longitudinal profile of how mental health in adults changed across different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and to examine their longitudinal associations with time-varying contextual (e.g., COVID-19 policy response and pandemic intensity) and individual level factors. ⋯ Our results provided empirical evidence on how changes in contextual and individual level factors were related to changes in depressive and anxiety symptoms. While some factors (e.g., confidence in healthcare, social support) clearly acted as consistent predictors of depressive and/or anxiety symptoms, other factors (e.g., stringency index, COVID-19 knowledge) were dependent on the specific situations occurring within society. This could provide important implications for policy making and for a better understanding of mental health of the general public during a national or global health crisis.