Editor's Note In this study led by researchers from the University of Maryland School f Medicine, Baltimore, hospitalized COVID-19 patients who took low-dose aspirin daily for their heart health had a 47% lower risk of dying in the hospital than those who did not take aspirin. This retrospective analysis of…

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Preventing infection transmission has been a chief concern of healthcare leaders and staff striving to protect their patients and themselves from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The virus poses an insidious threat that includes the possibility of bronchoscopy-associated transmission of COVID-19. Long before the pandemic, epidemiologist and researcher Cori…

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Editor’s Note: This article from Whitman Partners addresses some ways OR nurse leaders can help their health systems recover from the financial fallout and disruption in normal processes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Whitman Partners is a Portland, Oregon-based specialty search firm dedicated to placing directors of surgical services at…

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Across the US, surgical services are estimated to comprise around 20% of national health spending and typically generate up to 70% of total health system revenue.1, 2 That makes surgical services the largest revenue generator for a hospital, supporting access to numerous other healthcare services. Considering the average hospital has…

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Any process improvement project is far more likely to succeed with backing from leadership. The familiar phrase, “the buck stops here,” reflects a mindset that applies to OR managers who take ownership of what happens to their patients and their staffs every day. But what if they could say, “the…

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Editor's Note This study led by researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, finds that patients who survive serious COVID-19 infections have a long-lasting immune response against the virus. The study includes a cohort of case patients with known COVID-19 infection (343) and controls (1,548). Blood…

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Editor's Note David Nabarro, MD, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) special envoy on COVID-19 in a video interview on October 10 urged world leaders to stop using lockdowns as their primary COVID-19 control method. He added that WHO believes the only time a lockdown is justified is to buy time…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on October 9 announced that it is taking action to stop labs that are testing for COVID-19 without proper Clinical Laboratory Improvements Amendments (CLIA) certification. The agency has issued 171 cease-and-desist letters to US facilities that were testing for COVID-19…

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Editor's Note New research presented October 12 at UEG [United European Gastroenterology] Week Virtual 2020 shows that delays in colorectal cancer (CRC) screening caused by COVID-19 has resulted in significantly increased mortality rates. Researchers at the University of Bologna, Italy, developed a model to forecast the impact of delayed CRC…

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Editor's Note Leandro Pecchia, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, has been awarded £13 million (nearly $17 million) for the ODIN project. The project will explore the use of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) to ease pressures on hospitals during recovery from COVID-19…

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