Kosin Medical Journal

Original articles

Human resources and medical supplies consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic: a single-center study: Hye Jin Park, Yu Bin Seo, Jin Ju Park, Sun Hee Na, Jacob Lee; Kosin Med J. 2024;39(1):44-50. Published online September 14, 2023; DOI: https://doi.org/10.7180/kmj.23.126

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Abstract PDF PubReader ePub: Background
In the face of the unexpected coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, every country has struggled with insufficient human resources and medical supplies. This study aims to provide the statistical information necessary for discussing how to model stockpiles of medical resources.
Methods
This study was conducted at the Hallym University Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital, in South Korea. The study duration was 2 weeks, centered on March 16, 2022, when the number of daily confirmed patients with COVID-19 in Korea peaked. The number of human resources was obtained by counting the number of healthcare workers using CCTV. Drug prescriptions and medical device usage were obtained from electronic medical records.
Results
In total, 117 inpatients and 26,485 outpatients were managed at this hospital during the 2-week study period. Daily visits were highest among nurses in all units, followed by doctors and radiology technicians. The mean daily consumption of personal protective equipment (PPE) per bed was 4.3 sets in the intensive care unit (ICU), 1.8 in the semi-ICU, and 1.4 in the ward. Despite the four-fold difference in the number of patients, there was no statistically significant difference between the two wards in the number of daily visits. Drug prescription rates were higher among inpatients than at-home patients.
Conclusions
The higher the COVID-19 severity, the higher the consumption of PPE per patient. Among healthcare workers, nurses had the highest number of inpatient treatment visits for COVID-19. To efficiently utilize, PPE, structures containing more isolation beds in a single negative pressure isolation system would be preferred.

The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on prostate cancer screening and diagnosis in Korea: Byeong Jin Kang, Kyung Hwan Kim, Hong Koo Ha; Kosin Med J. 2023;38(3):193-200. Published online August 16, 2023; DOI: https://doi.org/10.7180/kmj.23.116

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Abstract PDF PubReader ePub: Background
The global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which started in early 2020, has had multiple impacts on cancer care. This study assessed how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced prostate cancer (PCa) screening and diagnosis in South Korea.
Methods
Patients who visited the outpatient clinic at a single institution for PCa evaluation were included in this study and divided into a pre-COVID-19 group and a COVID-19 pandemic group, based on the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing policies on March 1, 2020. The number of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests, patients with elevated PSA levels, and prostate biopsy results were analyzed.
Results
In total, 8,926 PSA tests were administered during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to 15,654 before the pandemic (p<0.05). Of 2,132 patients with high PSA levels, 1,055 (49.5%) received prostate biopsies before the pandemic and 1,077 (50.5%) did so during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic group had a higher detection rate of PC, and increased rates of Gleason scores (GS) 7 and 9–10, while the rate of GS 6 decreased compared to the pre-COVID-19 group (p<0.05). The rate of clinically significant PCa (csPCa) was also higher during the pandemic (p<0.05). In both magnetic resonance imaging-guided and standard biopsies, the GS 6 rate decreased, and the csPCa rate increased during the COVID-19 pandemic (each, p<0.05).
Conclusions
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the detection rate of prostate biopsies and the rate of csPCa increased significantly. Thus, PCa was diagnosed at a more advanced state in Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Performance comparison between Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 and Anti-SARS-CoV-2 S and Atellica IM SARS-CoV-2 Total and SARS-CoV-2 IgG assays: Seri Jeong, Yoo Rha Hong, Hyunyong Hwang; Kosin Med J. 2022;37(2):154-162. Published online June 27, 2022; DOI: https://doi.org/10.7180/kmj.22.114

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Background
Although serological severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) tests from several manufacturers have been introduced in South Korea and some are commercially available, the performance of these test kits has not yet been sufficiently validated. Therefore, we compared the performance of Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 (ACOV2) and Anti-SARS-CoV-2 S (ACOV2S) and Atellica IM SARS-CoV-2 Total (COV2T) and SARS-CoV-2 IgG (sCOVG) serological tests in this study.
Methods
A total of 186 patient samples were used. For each test, we analyzed the positive rate of serological antibody tests, precision, linearity, and agreement among the four assays.
Results
The positive rates of COV2T, sCOVG, and ACOV2S were high (81.7%–89.2%) in total, with those for ACOV2S being the highest, while those of ACOV2 were as low as 44.6%. This may be related to the high completion rate of vaccination in Korea. The repeatability and within-laboratory coefficients of variation were within the claimed allowable imprecision; however, further research is needed to establish an allowable imprecision at low concentrations. COV2T showed a linear fit, whereas sCOVG and ACOV2S were appropriately modeled with a nonlinear fit. Good agreement was found among COV2T, sCOVG, and ACOV2S; however, the agreement between ACOV2 and any one of the other methods was poor.
Conclusions
Considering the different antigens used in serological SARS-CoV-2 antibody assays, the performance of the tested assays is thought to show no significant difference for the qualitative detection of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.

Citations

Citations to this article as recorded by

Evaluation of automated calibration and quality control processes using the Aptio total laboratory automation system
Namhee Kim, Yein Kim, Jeongeun Park, Jungsoo Choi, Hyunyong Hwang
Kosin Medical Journal.2022; 37(4): 342. CrossRef

Review article

Adverse events following vaccination against coronavirus disease 2019: Minji Jeon, Sol Jin, Jin-Young Lee; Kosin Med J. 2022;37(1):18-26. Published online March 28, 2022; DOI: https://doi.org/10.7180/kmj.22.017

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Abstract PDF PubReader ePub: To overcome the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, large-scale vaccination is proceeding worldwide. As of December 23, 2021, 10 novel vaccines against COVID-19 had been validated for use by the World Health Organization (WHO), including BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech), mRNA-1273 (Moderna), AZD1222 (AstraZeneca), and Ad26.COV2.S (Janssen). These novel vaccines against COVID-19 showed acceptable safety profiles in randomized clinical trials. Most adverse events following immunization (AEFIs) associated with these novel vaccines ranged from mild to moderate and improved within a few days after administration. However, serious adverse events associated with vaccines that were not observed in the clinical trials were reported in real-world data. Adverse events of special interest include not only anaphylaxis or neurologic disorders (such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, transverse myelitis, or seizure) but also myocarditis or pericarditis associated with the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines and thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome associated with the adenovirus-vector vaccines. Although several fatal cases of serious AEFIs that may have been related to vaccination have been reported, it is recommended to continue vaccination because the benefits of vaccines’ preventive effects against COVID-19 outweigh the risks of rare serious adverse events. Long-term monitoring of various AEFIs and sharing of clinical experiences are necessary for safe and efficient large-scale vaccination.

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