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BackgroundThoracoscopy under local anaesthesia (LAT) is a well-established diagnostic tool to evaluate patients with suspected malignant pleural effusion. Most centres in the UK admit patients post procedure for overnight monitoring and discharge home the next day. During first wave of COVID19 pandemic, elective procedures in particular aerosol generating were put on hold to mitigate risk of infection. Organising a bed for inpatient elective procedures also proved challenging.AimTo assess outcomes in patients who were discharged same day post Thoracoscopy – diagnostic accuracy, complications and readmission within 30 days. The data was compared to the preceding year to evaluate the impact of change in practice.MethodsRetrospective review of consecutive LAT procedures in patients with suspected malignant pleural effusions between June 2020 – May 2022 (24 months)Service was put on hold between March and June 2020.ResultsFifty-eight patients underwent LAT between June 2020 and May 2022.Mean age 76 years.Thirty-five patients diagnosed with malignancy – 22 mesothelioma, 11 metastatic adenocarcinoma, one clear cell carcinoma and one non small cell with squamous differentiation. 3 false negative pleural biopsies: 2 confirmed mesothelioma on Video assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) and the other was lymphoma on axillary lymph node biopsy.23 biopsies were negative for malignancy;2 confirmed negative on VATS and the remaining confirmed benign by close monitoring. They included infection and organ failure. Overall diagnostic accuracy was 96.5%.55 (95%) patients were discharged the same day. 40 (69%) of the patients had Indwelling pleural catheter (IPC) implanted.Of the 95% of the patients only two patients were readmitted within 30 days post procedure due to procedure related chest pain and surgical emphysema.Of the 3 (5%) admissions post procedure, only 1 had air leak;one was generally unwell and one patient was admitted due to social reasons and discharged within 48 hrs.COVID19 LAT data was compared to the pre-COVID 12-month period, wherein 35 patients underwent LAT with mean length of stay of 1.91 days and none of the patients were re-admitted within 30 days post procedure.ConclusionOur review suggests elective LAT can be safely performed as a day-case procedure in a tertiary centre with bed day cost savings. There were no significant immediate or late procedure related complications. Further large studies are required to validate our findings.
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Introduction: During Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, Healthcare Workers (HCWs) are the frontline personals who are engaged in different facilities of the health system. So they always remain at a greater risk of exposure and acquiring the disease. They may also become a potential source of infection to the other patients as well to the community. Aim: To estimate the seroprevalence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-COV-2) specific Immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies among asymptomatic, COVID-19 negative HCWs of a tertiary care hospital. Materials and Methods: This hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted in the Department of Microbiology in a tertiary care hospital of North-East India. A total of 215 HCWs were recruited from 15th October to 14th December 2020 after taking written and informed consent. Inclusion criteria were: A) >18 years of age and both genders, b) asymptomatic, negative for COVID-19 either by Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) or Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR), c) working in the hospital for atleast last four months. Predesigned questionnaire was used for data collection. Serum samples were tested for SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies by Enzyme Linked Fluorescence Assay (ELFA) using VIDAS (VITEK ImmunoDiagnostic Assay System) platform. Chi-square test was used (Epi Info version 7 software) for data analysis. Results: The prevalence of SARS-COV-2 IgG was 54 (25.12%) out of 215, which was highest in ≤30 years age group, 27 (32.14 %) out of 84 (p=0.0261). Significant seropositivity was found among cleaners 22 (61.11%) out of 36 (p<0.01) and participants who reported having COVID-19-related symptoms in the previous months (p<0.013). However gender, daily patient contact, close contact with COVID-19 cases and working in COVID-19 units showed no significance. Conclusion: The study highlighted a high burden of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection among HCWs. A proper surveillance system is needed for estimating the burden of COVID-19 among HCWs as well as in the community for better understanding of the dynamics of the infection.
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Coronavirus 2019 (in short, Covid-19), was first found in the Wuhan province of China in December 2019 and has been declared a global pandemic by WHO in March 2020. Since its inception, its rapid spread among nations had initially collapsed the world economy and the increasing death-pool created a strong fear among people as the virus spread through human contact. Initially doctors struggled to diagnose the increasing number of patients as there was less availability of testing kits and failed to treat people efficiently which ultimately led to the collapse of the health sector of several countries. To help doctors primarily diagnose the virus, researchers around the world have come up with some radiology imaging techniques using the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). While some of them worked on X-ray images and some others on CT scan images, very few of them worked on both the image types where their works are limited to detecting only covid and normal cases and none of them performed any comparative analysis between the performance of these two image types as far as our knowledge goes. This, therefore, has insisted us to perform a comparative analysis between X-ray and CT scan images. Thus we came up with a novel CNN model named CoroPy which works for both the image types and can detect normal, Covid-19 and viral pneumonia with great accuracy and shows that X-ray images have overall better performance. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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The purpose of this study was to investigate students' perceptions towards online assessment during the first wave of the COVID- 19 pandemic. A sample of students $(\mathrm{n}=302)$ participated in the study which took place during the second semester of the academic year 2019/2020. The study adopted a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods and consisted of a Likert scale survey questions and a free writing reflection question. Statistical analysis revealed that there is an inverse correlation between the students' GPAs, on the one hand, and their level of satisfaction with online assessment and the $\mathrm{pass}/\mathrm{fail}$ option, on the other. That is to say, students with higher GPAs were less satisfied with online testing and the $\mathrm{pass}/\mathrm{fail}$ option. In addition, students' responses to the open ending question provided educators with a number of suggestions for improvement such as implementing online oral exams and on-campus testing. The implications of the study are significant for maintaining accurate and fair assessment solutions during the current and any potential future crises. © 2020 IEEE.