Update on Climate Change: Its Impact on Respiratory Health at Work, Home, and at Play.

Climate change is a crisis of vast proportions that has serious implications for pulmonary health. Increasing global temperatures influence respiratory health through extreme weather events, wildfires, prolonged allergy seasons, and worsening air pollution. Children, elderly patients, and patients with underlying lung disease are at elevated risk of complications from these effects of climate change.

Symptoms of burnout in intensive care unit specialists facing the COVID-19 outbreak.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented healthcare crisis with a high prevalence of psychological distress in healthcare providers. We sought to document the prevalence of burnout syndrome amongst intensivists facing the COVID-19 outbreak.

Methods: Cross-sectional survey among intensivists part of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

Molecular analysis of bacterial contamination on stethoscopes in an intensive care unit.

Background: Culture-based studies, which focus on individual organisms, have implicated stethoscopes as potential vectors of nosocomial bacterial transmission. However, the full bacterial communities that contaminate in-use stethoscopes have not been investigated.

Methods: We used bacterial 16S rRNA gene deep-sequencing, analysis, and quantification to profile entire bacterial populations on stethoscopes in use in an intensive care unit (ICU), including practitioner stethoscopes, individual-use patient-room stethoscopes, and clean unused individual-use stethoscopes.