Adverse pregnancy outcomes including gestational diabetes and preeclampsia: Do primary care physicians refer to them in their medical files?

Aims: Pregnancies complicated with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) or preeclampsia should be considered risk factors for subsequent morbidity later in a women's life. Appropriate screening tests have been recommended for these women. We sought to evaluate whether primary care physicians document diagnoses of GDM or preeclampsia in the medical files during the post-partum period and to elicit whether appropriate screening tests were performed.Materials and methods: The medical records of 352 women discharged from the maternity ward with a diagnosis of GDM or preeclampsia were examined 12 weeks post-partum. We recorded whether a primary care visit occurred, if a relevant diagnosis was documented and if screening tests were conducted.Results: In our cohort, 89.2% of the GDM group and 81.0% of the preeclampsia group visited a primary care physician at least once. About 12.9% (n = 25) of the GDM group and 12.7% (n = 20) of the preeclampsia group were given a correct diagnosis; 40.7% of the GDM group underwent a diabetes screening test and 27.8% of the preeclampsia group underwent a blood pressure measurement.Conclusion: We concluded that diagnoses of GDM and pre-eclampsia are not well-documented by primary physicians and that recommended screening tests are not being sufficiently performed.

Can laboratory evaluation differentiate between coronavirus disease-2019, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus infections? A retrospective cohort study.

AIM: To identify clinical and laboratory parameters that can assist in the differential diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections. METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study, we obtained basic demographics and laboratory data from all 685 hospitalized patients confirmed with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), influenza virus, or RSV from 2018 to 2020. A multiple logistic regression was employed to investigate the relationship between COVID-19 and laboratory parameters. RESULTS: SARS-CoV-2 patients were significantly younger than RSV (P=0.001) and influenza virus (P=0.022) patients. SARS-CoV-2 patients also displayed a significant male predominance over influenza virus patients (P=0.047). They also had significantly lower white blood cell count (median 6.3×106 cells/µ) compared with influenza virus (P<0.001) and RSV (P=0.001) patients. Differences were also observed in other laboratory values but were insignificant in a multivariate analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Male sex, younger age, and low white blood cell count can assist in the diagnosis of COVID-19 over other viral infections. However, the differences between the groups were not substantial enough and would probably not suffice to distinguish between the viral illnesses in the emergency department.