Vaccine effectiveness against severe COVID-19 during the Omicron wave in Germany: results from the COViK study.

Purpose: COViK, a prospective hospital-based multicenter case-control study in Germany, aims to assess the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against severe disease. Here, we report vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19-caused hospitalization and intensive care treatment during the Omicron wave.

Methods: We analyzed data from 276 cases with COVID-19 and 494 control patients recruited in 13 hospitals from 1 December 2021 to 5 September 2022.

Effectiveness of vaccines in preventing hospitalization due to COVID-19: A multicenter hospital-based case-control study, Germany, June 2021 to January 2022.

We included 852 patients in a prospectively recruiting multicenter matched case-control study in Germany to assess vaccine effectiveness (VE) in preventing COVID-19-associated hospitalization during the Delta-variant dominance. The two-dose VE was 89 % (95 % CI 84-93 %) overall, 79 % in patients with more than two comorbidities and 77 % in adults aged 60-75 years. A third dose increased the VE to more than 93 % in all patient-subgroups.

Cornea donation in Germany: Obtaining consent.

Tissue donation is important to reverse cornea-related blindness. Unfortunately, the willingness to make a decision concerning organ and tissue donation while still alive remains low despite all efforts. By analyzing anonymized archived data from 25 654 next-of-kin interviews from our database over a period of 5 years (2013-2018), it was found that only 20.

[Recurrent ventricular tachycardias following myocardial infarction: linear ablation strategy using an electroanatomical mapping system].

Background And Aim Of Study: The implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) is the therapy of choice for patients with ventricular tachycardia (VT) after myocardial infarction. In some patients frequent ICD shocks occur, often resulting in clinical problems, if antiarrhythmic drugs insufficiently suppress them. Our aim was to describe electro-anatomical mapping and ablation techniques in patients with VTs, in which conventional strategy treatments have failed.

Circumferential pulmonary vein ablation for treatment of atrial fibrillation using an irrigated-tip catheter.

In this study, a series of 52 consecutive patients with atrial fibrillation from 1 institution underwent circumferential pulmonary vein ablation using an irrigated-tip catheter. The technique was safe, and 81% of the patients maintained sinus rhythm at 6 months. However, 1/3 of them required additional antiarrhythmic drug therapy.