Nursing diagnoses and hospital readmission of patients with respiratory diseases: Findings from a case-control study.

AIM: The rate of readmission after hospitalisation for respiratory diseases has become a common and challenging clinical problem. Social and functional patient variables could help identify cases at high risk of readmission. The aim was to identify the nursing diagnoses that were associated with readmission after hospitalisation for respiratory disease in Spain. DESIGN: Case-control study within the cohort of patients admitted for respiratory disease during 2016-19 in a tertiary public hospital in Spain (n = 3781). METHODS: Cases were patients who were readmitted within the first 30 days of discharge, and their controls were the remaining patients. All nursing diagnoses (n = 130) were collected from the electronic health record. They were then grouped into 29 informative diagnostic categories. Clinical confounder-adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated using logistic regression models. RESULTS: The readmission rate was 13.1%. The nursing diagnoses categories 'knowledge deficit' (OR: 1.61; 95%CI: 1.13-2.31), 'impaired skin integrity and risk of ulcer infection' (OR: 1.45; 95%CI: 1.06-1.97) and 'activity intolerance associated with fatigue' (OR: 1.56; 95%CI: 1.21-2.01) were associated with an increased risk of suffering an episode of hospital readmission rate at 30% after hospital discharge, and this was independent of sociodemographic background, care variables and comorbidity. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: The nursing diagnoses assigned as part of the care plan of patients during hospital admission may be useful for predicting readmissions.

Variant-genetic and transcript-expression analysis showed a role for the chemokine-receptor CCR5 in COVID-19 severity.

The chemokine receptor CCR5 has been implicated in COVID-19. CCR5 and its ligands are overexpressed in patients. The pharmacological targeting of CCR5 would improve the COVID-19 severity. We sought to investigate the role of the CCR5-Δ32 variant (rs333) in COVID-19. The CCR5-Δ32 was genotyped in 801 patients (353 in the intensive care unit, ICU) and 660 healthy controls, and the deletion was significantly less frequent in hospitalysed COVID-19 than in healthy controls (p = 0.01, OR = 0.66, 95%CI = 0.49-0.88). Of note, we did not find homozygotes among the patients, compared to 1% of the controls. The CCR5 transcript was measured in leukocytes from 85 patients and 40 controls. We found a significantly higher expression of the CCR5 transcript among the patients, with significant difference when comparing the non-deletion carriers (controls = 35; patients = 81; p = 0.01). ICU-patients showed non-significantly higher expression than no-ICU cases. Our study points to CCR5 as a genetic marker for COVID-19. The pharmacological targeting of CCR5 should be a promising treatment for COVID-19.