Articles: coronavirus.
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J Minim Invasive Gynecol · Mar 2021
Meta AnalysisAdvantages of, and Adaptations to, Enhanced Recovery Protocols for Perioperative Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
This review formulates the rationale for using enhanced recovery protocols (ERPs) to standardize and optimize perioperative care during this high-risk time to minimize poor outcomes owing to provider, patient, and system vulnerabilities. ⋯ ERPs are evidence-based, best practice guidelines applied across the perioperative continuum to mitigate surgical stress, decrease complications, and accelerate recovery. These benefits are part of the high-value-care equation needed to solve the clinical, operational, and financial challenges of the current COVID-19 pandemic. The factors driving outcomes on ERPs, such as the provision of minimally invasive surgery, warrant careful consideration. Tracking patient outcomes and improving care in response to outcomes data are key to the success of clinical care protocols such as ERPs. Numerous emerging clinical registries and reporting systems have been activated to provide outcomes data on the impact of COVID-19. This will inform and change surgical practice as well as provide opportunity to learn if the advantages that surgeons, patients, and the healthcare system might gain from using ERPs during a pandemic are meaningful.
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Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg · Mar 2021
Tracheotomy in a High-Volume Center During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evaluating the Surgeon's Risk.
Performing tracheotomy in patients with COVID-19 carries a risk of transmission to the surgical team due to potential viral particle aerosolization. Few studies have reported transmission rates to tracheotomy surgeons. We describe our safety practices and the transmission rate to our surgical team after performing tracheotomy on patients with COVID-19 during the peak of the pandemic at a US epicenter. ⋯ Tracheotomy for patients with COVID-19 can be done with minimal risk to the surgical providers when standard personal protective equipment is used (surgical gown, gloves, eye protection, hair cap, and N95 mask). Whether timing of tracheotomy following onset of symptoms affects the risk of transmission needs further study.
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Annals of family medicine · Mar 2021
The Use of Primary Care Big Data in Understanding the Pharmacoepidemiology of COVID-19: A Consensus Statement From the COVID-19 Primary Care Database Consortium.
The use of big data containing millions of primary care medical records provides an opportunity for rapid research to help inform patient care and policy decisions during the first and subsequent waves of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Routinely collected primary care data have previously been used for national pandemic surveillance, quantifying associations between exposures and outcomes, identifying high risk populations, and examining the effects of interventions at scale, but there is no consensus on how to effectively conduct or report these data for COVID-19 research. ⋯ This consensus agreement is aimed at facilitating transparency and rigor in methodological approaches, and consistency in defining and reporting cases, exposures, confounders, stratification variables, and outcomes in relation to the pharmacoepidemiology of COVID-19. This will facilitate comparison, validation, and meta-analyses of research during and after the pandemic.
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Without universal access to point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 testing, many hospitals rely on clinical judgement alone for identifying cases of COVID-19 early. ⋯ COVID-19 clinical risk stratification on initial assessment effectively identifies non-COVID-19 patients. However, diagnosing COVID-19 is challenging and risk of overcalling COVID-19 should be recognised, especially when background prevalence is low.