ABSTRACT
Pneumothorax and pneumomediastinum are life-threatening conditions especially in critically ill patients. One of the most common situations in which they occur is prolonged invasive and non-invasive mechanical ventilation with high end-expiratory pressure. Probably due to the high number of patients with SARS-CoV-2 respiratory infection being treated with mechanical ventilation, increasing number of pulmonary barotrauma cases have been reported.
ABSTRACT
Vaccination plays an important role in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 to minimie the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its life-threatening complications. Myocarditis has been reported as a possible and rare adverse consequence of different vaccines, and its clinical presentation can range from influenza-like symptoms to acute heart failure. We report a case of a 30-year-old man who presented progressive dyspnea and constrictive retrosternal pain after receiving SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Cardiac magnetic resonance and laboratory data revealed typical findings of acute myopericarditis.
Subject(s)
Aspirin/administration & dosage , BNT162 Vaccine , Bisoprolol/administration & dosage , COVID-19 , Myocarditis , Prednisolone/administration & dosage , Adrenergic beta-1 Receptor Antagonists/administration & dosage , Adult , Anti-Inflammatory Agents/administration & dosage , BNT162 Vaccine/administration & dosage , BNT162 Vaccine/adverse effects , COVID-19/diagnosis , COVID-19/prevention & control , Creatine Kinase, MB Form/blood , Electrocardiography/methods , Humans , Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Cine/methods , Male , Myocarditis/blood , Myocarditis/etiology , Myocarditis/physiopathology , Myocarditis/therapy , SARS-CoV-2 , Treatment Outcome , Troponin I/bloodABSTRACT
COVID-19 is a new pulmonary disease which is driving stress to the hospitals due to the large number of cases worldwide. Imaging of lungs can play a key role in the monitoring of health status. Non-contrast chest computed tomography (CT) has been used for this purpose, mainly in China, with significant success. However, this approach cannot be massively used, mainly for both high risk and cost, also in some countries, this tool is not extensively available. Alternatively, chest X-ray, although less sensitive than CT-scan, can provide important information about the evolution of pulmonary involvement during the disease;this aspect is very important to verify the response of a patient to treatments. Here, we show how to improve the sensitivity of chest X-ray via a nonlinear post-processing tool, named PACE (Pipeline for Advanced Contrast Enhancement), combining properly Fast and Adaptive Bidimensional Empirical Mode Decomposition (FABEMD) and Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE). The results show an enhancement of the image contrast as confirmed by three widely used metrics: (i) contrast improvement index, (ii) entropy, and (iii) measure of enhancement. This improvement gives rise to a detectability of more lung lesions as identified by two radiologists, who evaluated the images separately, and confirmed by CT-scans. The results show this method is a flexible and an effective approach for medical image enhancement and can be used as a post-processing tool for medical image understanding and analysis.