Publications by authors named "Francesco Bortolan"

Introduction: The influence of COVID19 vaccination on the risk of different neurological diseases has been subject of intense investigation. No large scale results have been published so far in the population of around 10 million people of Lombardia in Italy.

Methods: Linkable administrative health databases from the Lombardia region were used.

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Background: Limited temporal data on in-hospital mortality trends of patients hospitalized with acute heart failure (AHF) have been reported. We evaluated whether, in AHF hospitalized patients, the rate of in-hospital and 30-day mortality, and 30-day re-hospitalization for AHF have changed in the past 15 years.

Methods And Results: We examined administrative data from the Lombardy region, Italy and analysed data of all adults hospitalized for AHF from 2003 to 2018.

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Aims: Limited evidence exists regarding the outcomes of cancer patients hospitalized with new onset acute heart failure (AHF). We assessed the in-hospital mortality and 1 year outcomes of cancer patients admitted for new onset AHF, taking into account both past and active cancer status as well as cancer site.

Methods: We examined administrative data of adult patients hospitalized with a first episode of AHF from 2003 to 2018 in Lombardy, Italy.

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Background: This study aims to propose a semi-automatic method for monitoring the waiting times of follow-up examinations within the National Health System (NHS) in Italy, which is currently not possible to due the absence of the necessary structured information in the official databases.

Methods: A Natural Language Processing (NLP) based pipeline has been developed to extract the waiting time information from the text of referrals for follow-up examinations in the Lombardy Region. A manually annotated dataset of 10 000 referrals has been used to develop the pipeline and another manually annotated dataset of 10 000 referrals has been used to test its performance.

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Background: Older patients are less likely to receive percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) compared to younger patients. We investigated the prognostic impact of PCI in a large population of patients hospitalized with AMI in the period 2003-2018 by using the administrative Lombardy Health Database (Italy).

Methods: We considered all patients aged ≥75 years hospitalized with AMI (either STEMI or NSTEMI) from 2003 to 2018 in Lombardy.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study aimed to compare the long-term risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection between those who gained immunity from natural infection and those who received vaccines, using a large cohort from Lombardy, Italy.
  • - Researchers analyzed data from over 19,000 participants to measure the incidence of new infections over nine months, focusing on those who were either naturally immune, vaccinated, or unvaccinated.
  • - Results showed that the cumulative risk of new infections after nine months was similar for both natural immunity (21.8%) and vaccine-induced immunity (22.0%), suggesting both types provide comparable protection.
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Background: Electronic health databases are used to identify people at risk of poor outcomes. Using electronic regional health databases (e-RHD), we aimed to develop and validate a frailty index (FI), compare it with a clinically based FI, and assess its association with health outcomes in community-dwellers with SARS-CoV-2.

Methods: Data retrieved from the Lombardy e-RHD were used to develop a 40-item FI (e-RHD-FI) in adults (i.

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Background: Patients on chronic dialysis are less likely to be treated with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for acute myocardial infarction (AMI). This is due to the lack of evidence from randomized trials, concerns about possible PCI-related side effects, and multimorbidity. Therefore, routine use of PCI for treatment of dialysis patients with AMI remains an unresolved issue.

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Background: Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RA) and sodium glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT-2i) demonstrated cardiovascular and renal protection. Whether their benefits occur also during hospitalization for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) is not known. We evaluated in-hospital outcomes of patients hospitalized with AMI according to their chronic use of GLP-1 RA and/or SGLT-2i.

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BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, large-scale diagnostic testing and contact tracing have proven insufficient to promptly monitor the spread of infections.AimTo develop and retrospectively evaluate a system identifying aberrations in the use of selected healthcare services to timely detect COVID-19 outbreaks in small areas.MethodsData were retrieved from the healthcare utilisation (HCU) databases of the Lombardy Region, Italy.

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Introduction: We aimed to assess harms (post-vaccine myocarditis and pericarditis) and benefits (preventing severe disease) of COVID-19 vaccination.

Methods: We conducted a population-based retrospective cohort study. Using the integrated platform of the vaccination campaign of Lombardy Region (Italy), after the exclusion of 24,188 individuals not beneficiaries of the Regional Health Service, 9,184,146 citizens candidates to vaccine at December 27, 2020 were followed until November 30, 2021 (the loss to follow-up rate was 0.

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Objective: To estimate the incidence and describe clinical characteristics and outcome of GBS in COVID-19 patients (COVID19-GBS) in one of the most hit regions during the first pandemic wave, Lombardia.

Methods: Adult patients admitted to 20 Neurological Units between 1/3-30/4/2020 with COVID19-GBS were included as part of a multi-center study organized by the Italian society of Hospital Neuroscience (SNO).

Results: Thirty-eight COVID19-GBS patients had a mean age of 60.

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We evaluated the performance of the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) model for comparing two families of predictors (i.e., structured and unstructured data from visits to the emergency department (ED)) for the early detection of SARS-CoV-2 epidemic waves.

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Background: Little is known about vulnerability to severe COVID-19 illness after vaccination completion with three doses of vaccine against COVID-19.

Objectives: To identify individual features associated with increased risk of severe clinical manifestation of SARS-CoV-2 infections after receiving the third dose of vaccine against COVID-19.

Methods: We performed a nested case-control study based on 3,360,116 citizens from Lombardy, Italy, aged 12 years or older who received the third dose of vaccine against COVID-19 from 20 September through 31 December 2021.

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Objectives: to describe differences in the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections between Italians and foreigners residing in seven Italian Regions during the different phases of the pandemic and by gender.

Design: retrospective observational study.

Setting And Participants: all confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections from 02.

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Objectives: to describe the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection in relation with the use of nasal swabs in the immigrant population in Italy, using data from the COVID-19 national surveillance system and to verify if a difference is present comparing natives and immigrant.

Design: descriptive study based on longitudinal health-administrative data.

Setting And Participants: general population of six Italian Regions (Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio) covering about 55% of the resident population and 72% of foreigners' population.

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We aimed to identify individual features associated with increased risk of post-vaccine SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe COVID-19 illness. We performed a nested case-control study based on 5,350,295 citizens from Lombardy, Italy, aged ≥ 12 years who received a complete anti-COVID-19 vaccination from 17 January 2021 to 31 July 2021, and followed from 14 days after vaccine completion to 11 November 2021. Overall, 17,996 infections and 3023 severe illness cases occurred.

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Background: The evolution of SARS-CoV-2 has led to the emergence of several new variants, and few data are available on the impact of vaccination on SARS-CoV-2 variants. We aimed to assess the association between natural (previous infection) and induced (partial or complete vaccination) exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and the onset of new infection supported by the delta variant, and of comparing it with that supported by alpha.

Methods: We performed a test-negative case-control study, by linking population-based registries of confirmed diagnoses of infection with SARS-CoV-2, vaccinations against Covid-19 and healthcare utilization databases of the Italian Lombardy Region.

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Background: Scarce information is available on the duration of the protective effect of COVID-19 vaccination against the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and its severe clinical consequences. We investigated the effect of time since vaccine completion on the SARS-CoV-2 infection and its severe forms.

Methods: In this retrospective observational analysis using the vaccination campaign integrated platform of the Italian region of Lombardy, 5 351 085 individuals aged 12 years or older who received complete vaccination from Jan 17 to July 31, 2021, were followed up from 14 days after vaccine completion until Oct 20, 2021.

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Background: The analysis of interregional healthcare mobility represents one of the main criteria for evaluating Regional Healthcare Systems, both in terms of its economic-financial relevance and the quality and satisfaction of the services provided. The aim of the study is to analyze healthcare mobility and its associated cost in Italy in 2019 for all children ≤ 14 years of age.

Methods: We collected data from the "Rapporto annuale sull'attività di ricovero ospedaliero - Dati SDO 2019" published by the Italian Ministry of Health.

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