Articles: pandemics.
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Editorial
COVID-19 Pandemic and Telephone Triage before Attending Medical Office: Problem or Opportunity?
During the COVID-19 emergency, the medical operating protocols have been largely modified for reducing any type of contamination risk, for working in a safe way and for making the patient feel in a safe environment. Telemedicine, smart phones and apps could represent important devices for the community, in order to prevent virus trasmission and to perform quick diagnosis and management at medical offices. This manuscript could be useful for clinicians with regard to the current state of the effectiveness of the telephone triage in this COVID-19 epidemic period. Therefore, it could be an important starting point for future perspectives about telemedicine and virtual patient management.
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We describe the basic principles of mental health care during the COVID-19 pandemic that should be endorsed by the mental health professional associations and incorporated in the health strategies for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. The main principle is that there should be no substantial differences in the provision of health care for COVID-19 between persons with pre-existing mental health disorders and the ones without previous disorders. Subsequently, the organization of the health care should reflect that as well. These principles should (a) prevent the possible effects of stigmatizing attitudes toward mental health issues, possibly leading to potentially deleterious situations, such as psychiatric patients being treated (even temporarily) separately from other patients, in psychiatric facilities, where the staff is not equipped and trained adequately for the management of COVID-19; (b) highlight the fact that patients with mental health disorders are at greater risk for developing serious complications of COVID-19 infection due to other factors-they often smoke and have comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes, all associated with higher morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 infection; (c) highlight that measures should be taken to minimize the risk of the spread of infection in psychiatric wards/institutions; (d) provide a general framework for the reorganization of mental health services toward the provision of services for persons in need, including frontline medical workers and patients with COVID-19 without previous mental health problems as well as for persons with pre-existing mental health problems under new circumstances of pandemic.
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Zhonghua Shao Shang Za Zhi · May 2020
[Therapy of coronavirus disease 2019 induced acute respiratory distress syndrome is different from traditional acute respiratory distress syndrome].
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a global public health emergency threatening people's lives around the world. Although the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) induced by COVID-19 is similar to the ARDS caused by other diseases in terms of pathophysiological basis and clinical manifestations, they are also different in many aspects, which lead to different clinical therapies. Therefore, understanding the differences and similarities of ARDS induced by COVID-19 and other diseases currently are the basis for clinicians to make decisions for the treatment of COVID-19 induced ARDS.