Early clinical and CT features of COVID-19 and community-acquired pneumonia from a fever observation ward in Ningbo, China

INTRODUCTION@#We aimed to compare the early clinical manifestations, laboratory results and chest computed tomography (CT) images of COVID-19 patients with those of other community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) patients to differentiate CAP from COVID-19 before reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction results are obtained.@*METHODS@#The clinical and laboratory data and chest CT images of 51 patients were assessed in a fever observation ward for evidence of COVID-19 between January and February 2020.@*RESULTS@#24 patients had laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, whereas 27 individuals had negative results. No statistical difference in clinical features was found between COVID-19 and CAP patients, except for diarrhoea. There was a significant difference in lymphocyte and eosinophil counts between COVID-19 and CAP patients. In total, 22 (91.67%) COVID-19 patients had bilateral involvement and multiple lesions according to their lung CT images; the left lower lobe (87.50%) and right lower lobe (95.83%) were affected most often, and all lesions were located in the peripheral zones of the lung. The most common CT feature of COVID-19 was ground-glass opacity, found in 95.83% of patients, compared to 66.67% of CAP patients.@*CONCLUSION@#Diarrhoea, lymphocyte counts, eosinophil counts and CT findings (e.g. ground-glass opacity) could help to distinguish COVID-19 from CAP at an early stage of infection, based on findings from our fever observation ward.

Correlation between the immunophenotypes, treatment strategies and prognosis of gastrointestinal diffuse large B-cell lymphoma / 中华消化杂志

Objective To explore the differences in the prognosis of patients with different immunophenotypes gastrointestinal diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (GI-DLBCL) who received different treatment strategies.Methods From March 2006 to January 2016,at Nanfang Hospital,Southern Medical University in Guangzhou,the clinical data of 99 patients with pathologically confirmed GI-DLBCL were retrospectively analyzed.According to treatment strategies,patients were divided into chemotherapy alone group and combination of surgery and chemotherapy group.According to immunophenotypes,patients were divided into germinal center B-cell-like (GCB) type and non-GCB type.The two-year progression-free survival (PFS) rate and overall survival (OS) rate were evaluated.Kaplan-Meier analysis,log-rank test and Cox regression were performed for statistical analysis.Results Among the 99 patients with GI-DLBCL,51 patients were treated with chemotherapy alone,and 48 patients were treated with combination of surgery and chemotherapy.Forty-one cases were GCB phenotype and 40 cases were non-GCB phenotype.The median follow-up time was 25 months.The two-year PFS and OS rates were 70.9％ and 89.5％,respectively.The two-year PFS and OS rates of chemotherapy alone group were 63.6％ and 85.0％,respectively;both were lower than those of combination of surgery and chemotherapy group (79.4％ and 94.7％),and the differences were statistically significant (x2 =4.232,P =0.040 and x2 =4.260,P =0.039).The two-year PFS and OS rates of GCB group were 68.8％ and 93.9％,respectively.And the two-year PFS and OS rates of non-GCB group were 73.2％ and 85.6％,respectively.There were no statistically significant differences between these two groups (both P ＞ 0.05).Among 41 patients with GCB type,25 were treated with combination of surgery and chemotherapy and 16 were treated with chemotherapy alone.The two-year PFS rate of patients treated with combination of surgery and chemotherapy (83.1％) was higher than that of patients treated with chemotherapy alone (49.2％),and the difference was statistically significant (x2 =5.627,P =0.018).The results of multivariate analysis indicated that treatment strategy was not an independent prognostic factor for all the enrolled patients and in patients with GCB type (all P ＞ 0.05).Conclusions Immunophenotypes may lack evaluation value of prognosis in patients with GI-DLBCL.Although among all the enrolled patients and patients with GCB type,the prognosis of patients treated with combination of surgery and chemotherapy is better than that of patients treated with chemotherapy alone,treatment strategy is not an independent prognostic factor.Multi-factors should be evaluated before selection of treatment strategy.

Prognostic efficiency of interim 18F-FDG PET/CT in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma / 中华核医学与分子影像杂志

Objective To explore whether the prognostic efficiency of international prognostic index (IPI) can be further improved by interim 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET/CT.Methods A total of 185 patients (116 males,69 females;average age 49 years) with pathologically confirmed diffuse large Bcell lymphoma (DLBCL) from January 2004 to January 2014 were enrolled in this retrospective study.The risk was classified by IPI (0-2 was considered as low risk,3-5 was considered as high risk) and all patients underwent 18F-FDG PET/CT scan before and after 4 cycles of immunochemotherapy.Based on interim 18 F-FDG PET/CT imaging,5-point Deauville score was used to reclassify DLBCL patient into negative group and positive group,and the interpretations were evaluated for 2-year progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) rates.Kaplan-Meier analysis,log-rank test and Cox regression were used for data analysis.Results With a median follow-up of 27 (2-146) months,the 2-year PFS and OS rates were 60％(111/185) and 81％(150/185),respectively.A total of 114 patients were included in the low-risk group and 71 patients were in the high-risk group.Both 2-year PFS rates and OS rates between the 2 groups were statistically different:72％(82/114) vs 37％(26/71),x2=20.86,P＜0.01;90％(103/114) vs 63％(45/71),x2=13.39,P＜0.01.The interim PET/CT showed 113 patients with negative results and 72 patients with positive results,whose 2-year PFS rates and OS rates were also statistically different:82％ (93/113) vs 24％(17/72),x2 =66.66,P＜0.01;90％(102/113) vs 51％(37/72),x2 =33.11,P＜0.01.In the low-risk group,85 patients were PET-negative and 29 patients were PET-positive.The 2-year PFS rates were 88％ (75/85) and 31％(9/29),respectively (x2 =35.52,P＜0.01).The 2-year OS rates were 96％ (82/85) and 66％(19/29),respectively (x2 =11.88,P＜0.01).In the high-risk group,28 patients were PET-negative and 43 patients were PET-positive.The 2-year PFS and OS rates were 64％(18/28) vs 19％(8/43;x2 =17.33,P＜0.01) and 86％(24/28) vs 49％(21/43;x2=9.95,P＜0.01),respectively.Conclusions Both IPI and interim 18F-FDG PET/CT have the prognostic value for patients with DLBCL.Interim 18F-FDG PET/CT can improve the prognostic efficiency of IPI.