The management of emergency spinal surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.

AIMS: The current pandemic caused by COVID-19 is the biggest challenge for national health systems for a century. While most medical resources are allocated to treat COVID-19 patients, several non-COVID-19 medical emergencies still need to be treated, including vertebral fractures and spinal cord compression. The aim of this paper is to report the early experience and an organizational protocol for emergency spinal surgery currently being used in a large metropolitan area by an integrated team of orthopaedic surgeons and neurosurgeons. METHODS: An organizational model is presented based on case centralization in hub hospitals and early management of surgical cases to reduce hospital stay. Data from all the patients admitted for emergency spinal surgery from the beginning of the outbreak were prospectively collected and compared to data from patients admitted for the same reason in the same time span in the previous year, and treated by the same integrated team. RESULTS: A total of 19 patients (11 males and eight females, with a mean age of 49.9 years (14 to 83)) were admitted either for vertebral fracture or spinal cord compression in a 19-day period, compared to the ten admitted in the previous year. No COVID-19 patients were treated. The mean time between admission and surgery was 1.7 days, significantly lower than 6.8 days the previous year (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The structural organization and the management protocol we describe allowed us to reduce the time to surgery and ultimately hospital stay, thereby maximizing the already stretched medical resources available. We hope that our early experience can be of value to the medical communities that will soon be in the same emergency situation. Cite this article: Bone Joint J 2020;102-B(6):671-676.

Time-Series Forecasting of COVID-19 Cases Using Stacked Long Short-Term Memory Networks

The extent of the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated world economies and claimed millions of lives. Timely and accurate information such as time-series forecasting is crucial for government, healthcare systems, decision-makers, and policy-implementers in managing the disease's progression. With the potential value of early knowledge to save countless lives, the research investigated and compared the capabilities and robustness of sophisticated deep learning models to traditional time-series forecasting methods. The results show that the Stacked Long Short-Term Memory Networks (SLSTM) outperforms the Exponential Smoothing (ES) and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models for a 15-day forecast horizon. SLSTM attained a collective mean accuracy of 92.17% (confirmed cases) and 82.31% (death cases) using historical data of 419 days from March 6, 2020 to April 28, 2021 of four countries - the Philippines, United States, India, and Brazil. © 2021 IEEE.

Spanish Heart Transplant Registry. 32nd Official Report of the Heart Failure Association of the Spanish Society of Cardiology

Introduction and objectives: The present report updates the main characteristics and outcomes of heart transplants in Spain to 2020. Methods: We describe the main features of recipients, donors, surgical procedure, and immunosuppression in 2020. We also analyze the temporal trends of these characteristics and outcomes (survival) for the period 2011 to 2019. Results: In 2020, 278 heart transplants were performed (7.3% decrease vs 2019). The findings in 2020 confirmed previous observations of an increase in pretransplant sternotomy, a slight decrease in urgent transplants carried out with ventricular assist devices, a slight decrease in donor age, an increase in the use of allografts with previous arrest, and a decrease in ischemia time. Survival continued to improve in recent triennia, reaching 82.0% at 1 year in the period 2017 to 2019. Conclusions: The slight decrease in the number of heart transplants performed in 2020 in Spain, most likely due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, did not change the main characteristics of the procedure. No change was observed in the tendency to improved survival. Full English text available from:www.revespcardiol.org/en © 2021 Sociedad Española de Cardiología

EFFECTS OF THE CORONAVIRUS ON THE TOURISM SECTOR IN CHILE

In recent years, the development of tourism in the world showed a favorable evolution, both in tourist arrivals, as well as in income, employment, and diversification of the hotel offerings, among other indicators. In the case of Chile, 2019 became the scene of a social outbreak, the effects of which on tourism caused a sharp reduction in the number of international tourist arrivals and generated an overall sense of insecurity for internal travelers. In this context, the authorities and entrepreneurs in the tourism sector were preparing to take on the challenge. Their idea was to promote an intense advertising campaign aimed at recovering demand. The objective of this article is to analyze the scenario facing the tourism sector in Chile based on the situation generated by the coronavirus and to identify some key challenges that the sector will have to face to overcome it by taking into account the factors that triggered the social conflict in the first place. To analyze the evolution of the Chilean situation, firstly, a descriptive methodology is applied to clearly identify the evolution of the situation during the first months of 2020 in Chile. Secondly, the epa (Events Protest Analysis) method is applied to analyze press publications. Regarding the visible impact of the pandemic, there is a 99,7% drop in tourist arrivals compared to August 2019 and a 45,2% drop in the employment of accommodation and food service personnel (Deputy Secretary of Tourism, 2020). Likewise, collective protest actions, unprecedented in the country, were observed in which negative attitudes toward visiting tourists were displayed by the local communities in towns that had registered few cases of coronavirus. This situation presents a complex challenge for tourist destinations and will require new research efforts in the tourism sector to generate knowledge and planning instruments that help to face the increasingly frequent crises.

Perceptions and expectations in the university students from adaptation to the virtual teaching triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction: Confinement has fostered the debate on digitalization and virtual teaching. The objective is to expose the disadvantages of the telematic education system adopted during the quarantine on subjects like equal opportunities, well-being and satisfaction, and teaching quality;focusing on the university education level and taking into account the management of communications with the students. Methodology: Two surveys, both distributed by online means, were conducted on university students, one at the beginning of the confinement (n: 1612), and another in the examination period (n: 872). Results: 90% of students prefer face-to-face teaching and 80% consider that their university has not adapted adequately. Most believe that they will learn less, that their academic record will be affected, and that they will have more difficulties while finding a job. More than a half of the students have suffered close experiences related to coronavirus and they feel a lack of understanding on the university side. Conclusions: Universities have shown a poor institutional communication performance during the pandemic, both in communication with students and in listening to them.