ABSTRACT
In the COVID-19 reality, educational organizations worldwide faced the urgent need to transform the educational process to prevent the uncontrolled spread of infection while ensuring that students' competencies were built at the desired level. The primary way to solve this problem was an accelerated transition to distance education. In order to switch to this type of learning, educational institutions are devoting significant resources to training their staff in new teaching methods and improving technology for interacting with students. However, fast is not always good. Moreover, radical changes that do not correspond with the perceptions of the participants in the educational process may not bring the expected results, even if they are implemented in the spirit of the latest trends. In this regard, it is advisable to conduct research to update the ideas about the advantages and disadvantages of distance education, the timely identification of which can help improve the quality and effectiveness of the educational process. The paper presents the results of research conducted among the students of one of the flagship universities of Russia. The conducted study shows that students negatively perceive some advantages of distance education. Therefore, it is necessary to reconsider the conceptual foundations of distance education. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
ABSTRACT
The study of the characteristics and dynamics of laboratory biomarkers in patients with cardiovascular diseases (CVD) undergoing COVID-19-associated pneumonia may be of great clinical importance. The study included 116 patients who underwent COVID-19-associated pneumonia. The patients were divided into 2 groups. The first group included 49 patients without CVD, the second group - 67 patients with CVD. A blood sample was performed in all patients at the time of hospitalization and 3 months after discharge from the hospital. The parameters of general blood count, biochemistry, hemostasis, and biomarkers of inflammation were assessed - concentration of C-reactive protein (CRP), highly sensitive CRP (hs-CRP), homocysteine and IL-6. All patients initially underwent computed tomography of the chest organs. We found that ESR, WBC (leukocytes), NLR (neutrophils/lymphocytes ratio), fibrinogen, LDH (lactate dehydrogenase), LYM/CRP ratio (lymphocytes/CRP) were parameters that significantly distinguished patients in the 1st and 2nd groups. Three months after discharge from the hospital in patients of both groups the increased indicators approached the reference values, however, some parameters such as CRP, ESR, WBC, fibrinogen remained at a higher level in group 2 compared to group 1. Correlation analysis revealed the relationship between parameters of inflammation and hemostasis in the 2nd group of patients, which confirms the presence of latent vascular inflammatory potential in this group. It was revealed that such indicators as lymphocytes, neutrophils, APTT and LDH were associated with the initial volume of lung lesion more than 50%. Increase of these parameters by 1 unit contributes to increase in the volume of lung tissue damage by 6.5%, 6.4%, 11%, and 0.6%, respectively. Thus, dynamic control of laboratory parameters has prognostic value in assessing the nature of the course of COVID-19 associated pneumonia in patients with CVD and developing an algorithm for personalized monitoring of patients in the post-COVID period with the aim of timely correction of therapy to prevent unwanted vascular complications.