Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic demands reliable prognostic models for estimating the risk of long COVID. We developed and validated a prediction model to estimate the probability of known common long COVID symptoms at least 60 days after acute COVID-19.
Methods: The prognostic model was built based on data from a multicentre prospective Swiss cohort study.
Antibiotic-tolerant Staphylococcus aureus poses a great challenge to clinicians as well as to microbiological laboratories and is one reason for treatment failure. Antibiotic-tolerant strains survive transient antibiotic exposure despite being fully susceptible . Thus, fast and reliable methods to detect tolerance in the routine microbiology laboratory are urgently required.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Bacterial superinfections associated with COVID-19 are common in ventilated ICU patients and impact morbidity and lethality. However, the contribution of antimicrobial resistance to the manifestation of bacterial infections in these patients has yet to be elucidated.
Methods: We collected 70 Gram-negative bacterial strains, isolated from the lower respiratory tract of ventilated COVID-19 patients in Zurich, Switzerland between March and May 2020.
Background: Lung-protective ventilation is key in bridging patients suffering from COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) to recovery. However, resource and personnel limitations during pandemics complicate the implementation of lung-protective protocols. Automated ventilation modes may prove decisive in these settings enabling higher degrees of lung-protective ventilation than conventional modes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNocardiosis is known to be an opportunistic infection most commonly affecting immunocompromised patients that can lead to life-threatening conditions. Primary cutaneous disease remains a rare manifestation and unlike pulmonary or disseminated nocardiosis, it usually affects immunocompetent individuals. We present a case of a primary cutaneous nocardiosis of the head and neck after an insect bite in a healthy 50-year-old woman who had recently travelled from Greece.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe impact of secondary bacterial infections (superinfections) in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is not well understood. In this prospective, monocentric cohort study, we aim to investigate the impact of superinfections in COVID-19 patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Patients are assessed for concomitant microbial infections by longitudinal analysis of tracheobronchial secretions, bronchoalveolar lavages, and blood cultures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: In this study, we hypothesized that coronavirus disease 2019 patients exhibit sublingual microcirculatory alterations caused by inflammation, coagulopathy, and hypoxemia.
Design: Multicenter case-controlled study.
Setting: Two ICUs in The Netherlands and one in Switzerland.