ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: As on March 12, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic. Its rapid spread has posed major challenges to the management of health-care systems. Patients with hematological disorders, being immunocompromised in more ways than one, face a lot of challenges. Most of these patients require frequent visits to health-care facilities for transfusion support, infusions, surveillance, and follow-ups, which increase the risk of exposure and hence infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. AIM: We assessed the impact of the pandemic on the decisions of hematologists in Saudi Arabia. Method(s): An online survey was done through questionnaires, to understand the decisions and course of clinical treatments taken. 45 hematologist answered 20-questions structured questionnaires through online link. RESULT(S): The majority of hematologist have used virtual clinics in managing patients and have delayed or canceled well visits. Although some hematologist delayed treatment in stable patients like autologous stem cell transplantation for myeloma patients, the majority did not delay induction or consolidation therapies for patients with leukemia with curative intent plans. CONCLUSION(S): The crisis brought along with it challenges and opportunities to improve patient care through research and clinical practice. Telemedicine was sought for supporting outpatients. Malignancies were taken care of, with due precautions. Observations of decisions of hematologists resulted in the patients still being closely followed up and urgent treatments being attended to. The hematologists expressed satisfaction with the use of telemedicine. Online consultations and monitoring of patients could probably be taken as an alternative resource in such situations.Copyright © 2023 Journal of Applied Hematology Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Many systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) have been published regarding the incidence of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, which is acknowledged as high. Therefore, we aimed to assess the methodological quality of any SR/MA involving VTE and COVID-19. METHOD(S): This is a meta-epidemiological study evaluating the methodological quality of SR/MA. A structured search in PubMed and Web of Science was done for all SRs/MAs in VTE and COVID-19 from inception till April 29, 2021. We evaluated the methodological quality using A Measurement Tool to Assess SRs-2 (AMSTAR-2) checklist. RESULT(S): We included 29 SRs/MAs where only one SR/MA was rated as high (3.44%), 12 (41.37%) were rated as moderate, and the rest were rated as low/critically low (55.17%). No statistical significance was observed in Spearman's correlation analysis between the rate of methodological quality and the number of authors, searching period, publication month, and publishing journal's impact factor. CONCLUSION(S): The number of published SRs/MAs in the VTE and COVID-19 subject is rising rapidly. The readers should pay attention to the low methodological quality of most published SRs/MAs. Copyright © 2022 Journal of Applied Hematology.