Mortality in post-discharge COVID-19 patients from a tertiary care center - A follow-up study

Background: Among many responsibilities, the doctors from the COVID war room of our institute were assigned to take telephonic follow-up of discharged COVID patients to provide any medical assistance if needed. During this process, few relatives of the patient’s informed back that the patients had died after discharge from the COVID wards. Aim and Objective: Such data of death in the COVID patients after discharged are limited in India; hence, we conducted this study so that more information is generated. Materials and Methods: Relatives of these COVID patients were asked about date and place of death. Other data including gender, age, date of admission, date of discharge, and requirement of oxygen were available with the COVID war room and were used for evaluation. Results: Out of the 892 COVID discharged patients (between August and October 2020) who could be contacted, 19 (2.13%) patients (6 females and 13 males) had died after discharge from the COVID ward. Characteristics of these 19 patients included higher age (n = 11 were 61–80 years old and n = 3 were >80 years old), hospital stay of 11–20 days (n = 12), and required oxygen support (n = 12). Most deaths occurred within 20 days (n = 16) after discharge from the COVID ward. Conclusions: The current study reports deaths occurring COVID patients after discharge. Most of these deaths occurred within 4 weeks of cure and in elderly patients. More research with long-term follow-up is needed in “cured” COVID-19 patients so that appropriate preventive measures can be undertaken in the future.

Chloramphenicol: screening and review to evaluate its potential beneficial effects in leukaemia.

Chloramphenicol is an antimicrobial agent having a very broad-spectrum of activity including Gram-positive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria and anaerobes. However the use of chloramphenicol has reduced over a period of time due to the adverse effects of causing bone marrow depression or in some cases severe aplastic anaemia. As the effects are seen on the bone marrow cell, it was intended to find out if these adverse effects could be used for the benefits in leukaemia patients, using in-vitro study on leukaemic cell lines. The study showed inhibition of growth of the leukaemia cells by chloramphenicol which was comparable to or better than daunorubicin in some cell lines. The article also discusses the other adverse effect profile of chloramphenicol compared with anticancer drugs and its potential benefit in leukaemia and in neutropenic fever.