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People who experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest often require care at a regional center for continued treatment after resuscitation, but many do not initially present to the hospital where they will be admitted. For patients who require interfacility transport after cardiac arrest, the decision to transfer between centers is complex and often based on individual clinical characteristics, resources at the presenting hospital, and available transport resources. Once the decision has been made to transfer a patient after cardiac arrest, there is little direct guidance on how best to provide interfacility transport. Accepting centers depend on transferring emergency departments and emergency medical services professionals to make important and nuanced decisions about postresuscitation care that may determine the efficacy of future treatments. The consequences of early care are greater when transport delays occur, which is common in rural areas or due to inclement weather. Challenges of providing interfacility transfer services for patients who have experienced cardiac arrest include varying expertise of clinicians, differing resources available to them, and nonstandardized communication between transferring and receiving centers. Although many aspects of care are insufficiently studied to determine implications for specific out-of-hospital treatment on outcomes, a general approach of maintaining otherwise recommended postresuscitation care during interfacility transfer is reasonable. This includes close attention to airway, vascular access, ventilator management, sedation, cardiopulmonary monitoring, antiarrhythmic treatments, blood pressure control, temperature control, and metabolic management. Patient stability for transfer, equity and inclusion, and communication also must be considered. Many of these aspects can be delivered by protocol-driven care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author(s): Teresa L. May [sup.1] [sup.2], Christine W. Lary [sup.3], Richard R. Riker [sup.1], Hans Friberg [sup.4], Nainesh Patel [sup.5], Eldar Søreide [sup.6] [sup.7], John A. McPherson [sup.8], Johan Undén [...], Purpose Functional outcomes vary between centers after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and are partially explained by pre-existing health status and arrest characteristics, while the effects of in-hospital treatments on functional outcome are less understood. We examined variation in functional outcomes by center after adjusting for patient- and arrest-specific characteristics and evaluated how in-hospital management differs between high- and low-performing centers. Methods Analysis of observational registry data within the International Cardiac Arrest Registry was used to perform a hierarchical model of center-specific risk standardized rates for good outcome, adjusted for demographics, pre-existing functional status, and arrest-related factors with treatment center as a random effect variable. We described the variability in treatments and diagnostic tests that may influence outcome at centers with adjusted rates significantly above and below registry average. Results A total of 3855 patients were admitted to an ICU following cardiac arrest with return of spontaneous circulation. The overall prevalence of good outcome was 11-63% among centers. After adjustment, center-specific risk standardized rates for good functional outcome ranged from 0.47 (0.37-0.58) to 0.20 (0.12-0.26). High-performing centers had faster time to goal temperature, were more likely to have goal temperature of 33 °C, more likely to perform unconscious cardiac catheterization and percutaneous coronary intervention, and had differing prognostication practices than low-performing centers. Conclusions Center-specific differences in outcomes after OHCA after adjusting for patient-specific factors exist. This variation could partially be explained by in-hospital management differences. Future research should address the contribution of these factors to the differences in outcomes after resuscitation.

We evaluated the number of CD26 expressing cells in peripheral blood of patients with COVID‐19 within 72 h of admission and on day 4 and day 7 after enrollment. The majority of CD26 expressing cells were presented by CD3+CD4+ lymphocytes. A low number of CD26 expressing cells were found to be associated with critical‐severity COVID‐19 disease. Conversely, increasing numbers of CD26 expressing T cells over the first week of standard treatment was associated with good outcomes. Clinically, the number of circulating CD26 cells might be a marker of recovery or the therapeutic efficacy of anti‐COVID‐19 treatment. New therapies aimed at preserving and increasing the level of CD26 expressing T cells may prove useful in the treatment of COVID‐19 disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SARS-CoV-2 infection results in a spectrum of outcomes from no symptoms to widely varying degrees of illness to death. A better understanding of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and subsequent, often excessive, inflammation may inform treatment decisions and reveal opportunities for therapy. We studied immune cell subpopulations and their associations with clinical parameters in a cohort of 26 patients with COVID-19. Following informed consent, we collected blood samples from hospitalized patients with COVID-19 within 72 h of admission. Flow cytometry was used to analyze white blood cell subpopulations. Plasma levels of cytokines and chemokines were measured using ELISA. Neutrophils undergoing neutrophil extracellular traps (NET) formation were evaluated in blood smears. We examined the immunophenotype of patients with COVID-19 in comparison to that of SARS-CoV-2 negative controls. A novel subset of pro-inflammatory neutrophils expressing a high level of dual endothelin-1 and VEGF signal peptide-activated receptor (DEspR) at the cell surface was found to be associated with elevated circulating CCL23, increased NETosis, and critical-severity COVID-19 illness. The potential to target this subpopulation of neutrophils to reduce secondary tissue damage caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection warrants further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]