Publications by authors named "Sonia Zotti"
Article Synopsis
- Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) leads to upper airway collapse during sleep, and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is the main treatment, with mask choice being crucial for effectiveness.
- This study involved 50 OSA patients and compared diaphragmatic movement using oronasal vs. nasal CPAP masks, revealing significant improvement in diaphragmatic excursion with nasal masks.
- Findings suggest that nasal masks are generally more effective, especially for patients with larger neck circumferences, indicating that ultrasound assessments could help in selecting the best mask for CPAP treatment.
Advancing healthcare through thoracic ultrasound research in older patients.
Aging Clin Exp Res
December 2023
This paper reports the proceedings of a meeting convened by the Research Group on Thoracic Ultrasound in Older People of the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics, to discuss the current state-of-the-art of clinical research in the field of geriatric thoracic ultrasound and identify unmet research needs and potential areas of development. In the last decade, point-of-care thoracic ultrasound has entered clinical practice for diagnosis and management of several respiratory illnesses, such as bacterial and viral pneumonia, pleural effusion, acute heart failure, and pneumothorax, especially in the emergency-urgency setting. Very few studies, however, have been specifically focused on older patients with frailty and multi-morbidity, who frequently exhibit complex clinical pictures needing multidimensional evaluation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Frailty associates with increased vulnerability to adverse health outcomes and reduced tolerance to medical interventions. Its impact on patients with chronic respiratory diseases, particularly beyond chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), remains poorly understood.
Aims: To evaluate the association between frailty index and 5-year mortality across different "spirometric" patterns and the variation in their occurring frailty determinants.
Article Synopsis
- Hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia face higher risks of malnutrition and related death, prompting a study on nutritional assessment tools.
- The study analyzed 101 patients and found that tools like Mini-Nutritional Assessment short form (MNA-sf) and hand-grip strength (HGS) had limited predictive ability for in-hospital mortality or intubation.
- For patients under 70, HGS was somewhat effective, while for those over 70, phase angle proved to be a better predictor; however, the MNA-sf alone was not useful for any age group.
Hospitalization for acute SARS-CoV-2 infection confers an almost five-fold higher risk of post-discharge, all-cause mortality compared to controls from the general population. A negative impact on the functional autonomy of older patients, especially in cases of severe disease and prolonged hospitalization, has been recently described. However, little is known about the determinants of cause-specific mortality and loss of independence (LOI) in the activities of daily living (ADL) following COVID-19 hospitalization.
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