Pathological changes in COVID-19 pneumonia on limited post-mortem sampling of lung: A saga of inflammation and thrombosis

We describe three postmortem open lung-biopsy findings among patients with COVID-19 pneumonia who were on anticoagulant therapy. The spectrum of histopathological findings included lung inflammation in the form of diffuse alveolar damage (DAD) in exudative and organizing phases, with or without pulmonary artery thrombosis in different stages of evolution. This spectrum of inflammation and thrombosis may be indicative of a natural history of severe COVID-19 pneumonia or demonstrative of variation in therapeutics.

Relative potency of different generic brands of meropenem, colistin and fosfomycin: Implications for antimicrobial therapy and antimicrobial formulary

There is a need of a relatively simple and inexpensive method for the determination of relative potency of various generic brands of antibiotics in comparison to original products. The current study describes an agar diffusion method which can be performed in any microbiology laboratory, is cheap (costs $2 per test) and its results can be available after overnight incubation. The results show that neither all generics are reliable nor are all generic antibiotics of poor quality.

A method for early detection of antibiotic resistance in positive blood cultures: Experience from an oncology centre in eastern India.

Purpose: For antibiotic susceptibility results, conventional culture and sensitivity methods takes 48 hours after a blood culture is fl agged positive by automated systems. Early initiation of targeted antibiotic therapy is essential for effective management of sepsis to reduce morbidity, mortality, cost of treatment and prevent antibiotic resistance. Objective of this study was to evaluate Direct Sensitivity Test (DST) as a potential tool to get reliable antibiotic susceptibility results 24 hours earlier. Materials and Methods: Blood cultures fl agged positive between May 2011 to December 2012 by BacT/ALERT were Gram stained. All uni-microbial gram-negative blood cultures were simultaneously cultured and processed for DST from broth using disk diffusion method using British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC) guidelines. DST results available next day were compared with conventional antibiotic susceptibility test (AST) performed by Vitek-2 on isolated colonies. Results of DST (test method) and AST (reference method) were compared for agreements or errors. Results: Of the 840 antibiotic gram-negative organism combinations tested, Categorical and essential agreements were 83.7% and 96.2% respectively. Minor, major and very major errors were 12.5%, 3.33% and 0.47%, respectively. Conclusions: DST using disk diffusion from positive blood culture broths helps to initiate early targeted antibiotic therapy. There is high concordance between DST and AST.

Transrectal fine needle aspiration of prostate.

56 patients with prostatic enlargement were subjected to transrectal fine needle aspiration (FNA) of prostate. The cytologic diagnosis was correlated with histology in 55 cases. Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) was diagnosed in 44 cases. In 18 of these, there was associated chronic prostatitis in three cases acute prostatitis and in two cases granulomatous prostatitis. One case of tuberculous prostatitis and 11 cases of prostatic carcinoma could also be diagnosed on cytologic basis. There was only one false negative and no false positive cytodiagnosis was made.