To investigate the efficacy of amiodarone and lidocaine in cardiac arrest patients.

Objective: To investigate the trends in incidence and mortality of esophageal cancer in cancer registration areas of Anhui Province from 2014 to 2020, so as to provide the basis for formulating prevention and control measures. Methods: The incidence and mortality data of esophageal cancer in Anhui Province from 2014 to 2020 was collected through the Cancer Registry in Anhui Province. The crude incidence and crude mortality were calculated. The Chinese population-standardized rate was standardized using the age structure of the standard population from the Fifth National Population Census in 2000. The trends in incidence and mortality of esophageal cancer were analyzed using the average annual percent change (APPC), stratified by genders, urban/rural areas, and ages. Results: In Anhui Province, the rank of esophageal cancer incidence dropped from the third in 2014 to the sixth in 2020. Concurrently, the crude incidence and Chinese population-standardized incidence declined from 28.74/100 000 and 20.74/100 000 to 19.23/100 000 and 10.59/100 000, respectively (AAPC=-5.846%, -9.658%, both P<0.05). The mortality rank remained stable at the fourth in 2014 and 2020, while the crude mortality and Chinese population-standardized mortality decreased from 19.96/100 000 and 14.09/100 000 to 16.00/100 000 and 8.41/100 000, respectively (AAPC=-3.542%, -7.784%, both P<0.05). The Chinese population-standardized incidence (AAPC=-9.682%, -9.188%, -6.175% and -12.575%, all P<0.05) and Chinese population-standardized mortality (AAPC=-7.734%. -7.447%. -5.366% and -10.209%, all P<0.05) showed declining trends in males, females, urban, and rural areas, respectively. From 2014 to 2020 in Anhui Province, the crude incidence and mortality of esophageal cancer generally increased with age. However, significant declining trends were observed in crude incidence (AAPC=-12.779%, -11.701%, -11.955% and -5.751%, all P<0.05) and crude mortality (AAPC=-12.255%, -11.120%, -10.985% and -5.751%, all P<0.05) for the age groups of 40-<50, 50-<60, 60-<70, 70-<80 years. A significant declining trend in crude incidence was also seen in the ≥80 years group (APPC=-6.334%, P<0.05), but the trend in crude mortality was no statistically significant (P>0.05). Conclusion In registration areas of Anhui Province, the incidence and mortality of esophageal cancer exhibited a declining trend from 2014 to 2020, calling for focused attention on the middle-aged and elderly population and enhanced health behaviors such as tobacco and alcohol control.

We report a case of a male patient who developed persistent fever and central nervous system symptoms after eating raw snails for 10 days. The patient was diagnosed with Angiostrongyliasis depended on the clinical presentation, epidemiological history, and etiological results. The patient recovered after receiving albendazole anthelmintic and dexamethasone anti-inflammatory therapy. This article incorporates literature review to sort out the diagnosis and treatment of this patient, in order to provide feasible reference for clinicians.

Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS), a rare disease caused by complement abnormalities, is characterized by microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, and acute kidney injury. In this paper, we report a patient with severe renal insufficiency with rapidly progressive decline in binocular visual acuity, who developed eosinophilia during the course of the disease, and was diagnosed with aHUS after excluding other diseases. After glucocorticoid treatment, eosinophils decreased to normal, and after treatment with plasmapheresis combined with eculizumab, renal function tended to be stable, platelets returned to normal, but visual acuity did not improve significantly. This article reviews the diagnosis and treatment process of this patient and incorporates the review of literature, in the hope of providing reference for clinicians.

We report a case of a male patient who developed persistent fever and central nervous system symptoms after eating raw snails for 10 days. The patient was diagnosed with Angiostrongyliasis depended on the clinical presentation, epidemiological history, and etiological results. The patient recovered after receiving albendazole anthelmintic and dexamethasone anti-inflammatory therapy. This article incorporates literature review to sort out the diagnosis and treatment of this patient, in order to provide feasible reference for clinicians.

In 2009,the World Health Organization included snakebite on the list of neglected tropical diseases,acknowledging it as a common occupational hazard for farmers,plantation workers,and others,causing tens of thousands of deaths and chronic physical disabilities every year.This guideline aims to provide practical information to help clinical professionals evaluate and treat snakebite victims.These recommendations are based on clinical experience and clinical research evidence.This guideline focuses on the following topics:snake venom,clinical manifestations,auxiliary examination,diagnosis,treatments,and prevention.

BACKGROUND:Sepsis is one of the main causes of mortality in intensive care units(ICUs).Early prediction is critical for reducing injury.As approximately 36%of sepsis occur within 24 h after emergency department(ED)admission in Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care(MIMIC-IV),a prediction system for the ED triage stage would be helpful.Previous methods such as the quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment(qSOFA)are more suitable for screening than for prediction in the ED,and we aimed to find a light-weight,convenient prediction method through machine learning. METHODS:We accessed the MIMIC-IV for sepsis patient data in the EDs.Our dataset comprised demographic information,vital signs,and synthetic features.Extreme Gradient Boosting(XGBoost)was used to predict the risk of developing sepsis within 24 h after ED admission.Additionally,SHapley Additive exPlanations(SHAP)was employed to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the model's results.Ten percent of the patients were randomly selected as the testing set,while the remaining patients were used for training with 10-fold cross-validation. RESULTS:For 10-fold cross-validation on 14,957 samples,we reached an accuracy of 84.1%±0.3%and an area under the receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve of 0.92±0.02.The model achieved similar performance on the testing set of 1,662 patients.SHAP values showed that the five most important features were acuity,arrival transportation,age,shock index,and respiratory rate. CONCLUSION:Machine learning models such as XGBoost may be used for sepsis prediction using only a small amount of data conveniently collected in the ED triage stage.This may help reduce workload in the ED and warn medical workers against the risk of sepsis in advance.

Objective:Cardiac arrest (CA) represents a significant public health challenge, posing a substantial threat to individual health and survival. To enhance the survival rates of patients experiencing out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), Baoan District in Shenzhen City has undertaken exploratory initiatives and practical interventions, yielding promising preliminary outcomes.Methods:1.Innovate emergency medical services by developing a "four-circle integration" system that connects to the hospital. This system encompasses the social emergency medical system, the out-of-hospital emergency medical system, the in-hospital emergency medical service system, and the intensive care treatment system. 2.Develop a comprehensive model for the construction of a social emergency medical training system, characterized by party leadership, government oversight, departmental coordination, professional guidance, technological support, and community involvement, termed the "Baonan Model." Additionally, establish evaluation criteria to assess the effectiveness of the social emergency medical training system in Baonan District; 3. Develop a cardiac arrest registration system and a social emergency medical training management system for Baonan District; 4. Enhance the proficiency in treatment techniques and the quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation among emergency medical professionals; 5. Strengthen and advance the development of a "five-minute social rescue network" to address the critical "emergency window period." .Result:In Baonan District, 9.18% of the public is trained in emergency medical skills. The bystander CPR rate for OHCA is 26.11%, AED use is at 4.78%, the 30-day survival rate is 6.31%, and the discharge survival rate is 4.44%.Conclusion:The implementation of the aforementioned measures can substantially enhance the survival rate of patients experiencing OHCA at the time of discharge.

Objective:Hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsy(HNPP)is a rare autosomal dominant peripheral neuropathy,usually caused by heterozygous deletion mutations in the peripheral myelin protein 22(PMP22)gene.This study aims to investigate the clinical and molecular genetic characteristics of HNPP. Methods:HNPP patients in the Department of Neurology at Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University from 2009 to 2023 were included in this study.The general clinical data,nervous electrophysiological and molecular genetic examination results were collected and analyzed.Molecular genetic examination was to screen for deletion of PMP22 gene using multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification(MLPA)after extracting genomic DNA from peripheral blood;and if no PMP22 deletion mutation was detected,next-generation sequencing was used to screen for PMP22 point mutations.The related literatures of HNPP were reviewed,and the clinical and molecular genetic characteristics of HNPP patients were analyzed. Results:A total of 34 HNPP patients from 24 unrelated Chinese Han families were included in this study,including 25 males and 9 females.The average age at illness onset was 22.0 years.Sixty-two point five percent of the families had a positive family history.Among them,30 patients had symptoms of peripheral nerve paralysis.Patients often presented with paroxysmal single limb weakness with(or)numbness(25/30),and some patients had paroxysmal unilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve(vagus nerve)paralysis(2/30).Physical examination revealed muscle weakness(23/29),hypoesthesia(9/29),weakened or absent ankle reflexes(20/29),distal limb muscle atrophy(8/29)and high arched feet(5/29).Most patients(26/30)could fully recover to normal after an acute attack.Thirty-one patients in our group underwent nervous electrophysiological examination,and showed multiple demyelinating peripheral neuropathies with both motor and sensory nerves involved.Most patients showed significantly prolonged distal motor latency(DML),mild to moderate nerve conduction velocity slowing,decreased amplitude of compound muscle action potential(CMAP)and sensory nerve action potential(SNAP),and sometimes with conduction block.Nerve motor conduction velocity was(48.5±5.5)m/s,and the CMAP amplitude was(8.4±5.1)mV.Nerve sensory conduction velocity was(37.4±10.5)m/s,and the SNAP amplitude was(14.4±15.2)μV.There were 24 families,23 of whom had the classical PMP22 deletion,the last one had a heterozygous pathogenic variant in the PMP22 gene sequence(c.434delT).By reviewing clinical data and genetic testing results of reported 1 734 HNPP families,we found that heterozygous deletion mutation of PMP22 was the most common pathogenic mutation of HNPP(93.4%).Other patients were caused by PMP22 small mutations(4.0%),PMP22 heterozygous gross deletions(0.6%),and PMP22 complex rearrangements(0.1%).Thirty-eight sorts of HNPP-related PMP22 small mutations was reported,including missense mutations(10/38),nonsense mutations(4/38),base deletion mutations(13/38),base insertion mutations(3/38),and shear site mutations(8/38).HNPP patients most often presented with episodic painless single nerve palsy.Common peroneal nerve,ulnar nerve,and brachial plexus nerve were the most common involved nerves,accounting for about 75%.Only eighteen patients with cranial nerve involved was reported. Conclusion:Heterozygous deletion mutation of PMP22 is the most common pathogenic mutation of HNPP.Patients is characterized by episodic and painless peripheral nerve paralysis,mainly involving common peroneal nerve,ulnar nerve,and other peripheral nerves.Nervous electrophysiological examination has high sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of HNPP,which is manifested by extensive demyelinating changes.For patients with suspected HNPP,nervous electrophysiological examination and PMP22-MLPA detection are preferred.Sanger sequencing or next generation sequencing can be considered to detect other mutations of PMP22.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of improved nursing strategy on prognosis of older immunosuppressed patients with pneumonia and sepsis. METHODS: A prospective study was conducted. The older immunosuppressed patients with pneumonia and sepsis admitted to the department of intensive care medicine and emergency intensive care unit (ICU) of Peking Union Medical College Hospital from January 2017 to July 2022 were enrolled. In the first stage (from January 2017 to December 2019), patients received the original nursing strategy (original nursing strategy group), including: (1) nurses were randomly assigned; (2) routine terminal cleaning; (3) ICU environmental cleaning twice a day; (4) oral care was performed with chlorhexidine twice a day; (5) original lung physiotherapy [head of bed elevated at 30 degree angle-45 degree angle, maintaining a Richmond agitation-sedation scale (RASS) -2 to 1, sputum aspiration as needed]. After 1 month of learning and training of the modified nursing treatment strategy for nurses and related medical staff, the patients in the second stage (from February 2020 to July 2022) received the improved nursing strategy (improved nursing strategy group). The improved nursing strategy improved the hospital infection prevention and control strategy and lung physical therapy strategy on the basis of the original nursing strategy, including: (1) nurses were fixed assigned; (2) patients were placed in a private room; (3) enhanced terminal cleaning; (4) ICU environmental cleaning four times a day; (5) education and training in hand hygiene among health care workers was improved; (6) bathing with 2% chlorhexidinegluconate was performed once daily; (7) oral care with a combination of chlorhexidine and colistin was provided every 6 hours; (8) surveillance of colonization was conducted; (9) improved lung physiotherapy (on the basis of the original lung physiotherapy, delirium score was assessed to guide early mobilization of the patients; airway drainage was enhanced, the degree of airway humidification was adjusted according to the sputum properties, achieving sputum viscosity grade II; lung ultrasound was also used for lung assessment, and patients with atelectasis were placed in high lateral position and received the lung recruitment maneuver). Baseline patient information were collected, including gender, age, underlying diseases, source of admission, disease severity scores, vital signs, ventilatory parameters, blood gas analysis, life-sustaining treatments, clinical laboratory evaluation, indicators of infection and inflammation, pathogens and drug therapy. The primary outcome was 28-day mortality, and the secondary outcomes were duration of mechanical ventilation, length of ICU stay, and ICU mortality. Multivariate Logistic regression analysis was used to determine the risk factors for 28-day death in older immunosuppressed patients with pneumonia and sepsis. RESULTS: Finally, 550 patients were enrolled, including 199 patients in the original nursing strategy group and 351 patients in the improved nursing strategy group. No significant differences were found in gender, age, underlying diseases, source of admission, disease severity scores, vital signs, ventilatory parameters, blood gas analysis, life-sustaining treatments, clinical laboratory evaluation, indicators of infection and inflammation, coexisting pathogens or drug therapy between the two groups. Compared with patients in the original nursing strategy group, those in the improved nursing strategy group had significantly fewer duration of mechanical ventilation and length of ICU stay [duration of mechanical ventilation (days): 5 (4, 7) vs. 5 (4, 9), length of ICU stay (days): 11 (6, 17) vs. 12 (6, 23), both P < 0.01], and lower ICU mortality and 28-day mortality [ICU mortality: 23.9% (84/351) vs. 32.7% (65/199), 28-day mortality: 23.1% (81/351) vs. 33.7% (67/199), both P < 0.05]. Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that the improved nursing strategy acted as an independent protective factor in 28-day death of older immunosuppressed patients with pneumonia and sepsis [odds ratio (OR) = 0.543, 95% confidence interval (95%CI) was 0.334-0.885, P = 0.014]. CONCLUSIONS Improved nursing strategy shortened the duration of mechanical ventilation and the length of ICU stay, and decreased ICU mortality and 28-day mortality in older immunosuppressed patients with pneumonia and sepsis, significantly improving the short-term prognosis of such patients.
Humans ; Aged ; Prospective Studies ; Chlorhexidine/therapeutic use* ; Intensive Care Units ; Pneumonia ; Prognosis ; Sepsis/therapy* ; Inflammation