Conectar
To estimate the prevalence of established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (eASCVD) and the prevalence of ASCVD high-risk patients as defined by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) among the Egyptian population of the Prevalence and Clinical Management of Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Diseases in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes (PACT)-Middle East and Africa study.
An observational, multicentre, cross-sectional study.
Eight secondary care centres in Egypt.
550 adult males and females who provided informed consent and had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) for at least 180 days. Participants were excluded if they had participated previously in the study, had been diagnosed with T1DM, experienced mental incapacity, were unwilling to participate, had a known language barrier precluding adequate understanding or cooperation or had a known congenital heart disease or malformation.
The primary outcome was the proportion of patients with eASCVD, while the secondary outcome was the proportion of patients with T2D with high risk of ASCVD and without eASCVD.
Prevalence of eASCVD was 108/550 (19.6%, 95% CI 16.5% to 23.2%), and the prevalence of high risk for ASCVD in the population without eASCVD was 378/442 (85.5%, 95% CI 81.9% to 88.5%). Approximately 99% of the study population was categorised as ESC very high risk or high risk for CVD. On assessing utilisation of antidiabetic medications with cardiovascular benefit, only 20% were receiving sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors, and 3% were receiving glucagon-like peptide-1 analogues.
The prevalence of eASCVD and high risk for ASCVD in Egypt is alarming, and the inadequate pharmacological control increases the ASCVD burden in the T2DM population. This calls for immediate, comprehensive action to reassess T2DM care.
Previous studies show that both the frequency of surgeries and incidence of surgical site infections (SSIs) have been lower during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study's purpose is to analyse the possible association of the COVID-19 epidemic-related increased health measures, such as protective equipment and products, increased hand hygiene and restrictions imposed, on the incidence of SSIs in an academic medical centre. We designed a single-centre, retrospective cohort study and collected data on the frequency of surgeries and the incidence of SSIs, among patients who had surgeries pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic. Besides the intervention and outcome variable, we sought information on patient gender, surgery type, body mass index (BMI), smoking, and type II diabetes mellitus. We used Wald 95% confidence interval (95% CI) and the p values of the odds ratio (OR) to report results. Of the N = 24 098 surgeries performed in this hospital, there were 269 patients who reported post-surgical SSIs in this hospital between March 2019 and March 2021. The OR of developing a post-surgical SSI was 0.40 (95% CI: 0.33–0.57, p < 0.05; adjusted for confounders 0.39 [95% CI: 0.30–0.52, p < 0.05]) among patients who had surgery under post-pandemic infection control measures, as compared to patients who had surgery under pre-pandemic usual care infection control measures. Our significant results conclude that an association may exist between the enhanced infection control measures used during the COVID-19 pandemic and lower incidence of SSIs we observed during this period.
FreshRSS 