Modelling the Impact of Robotics on Infectious Spread Among Healthcare Workers.

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic has brought the world to a standstill. Healthcare systems are critical to maintain during pandemics, however, providing service to sick patients has posed a hazard to frontline healthcare workers (HCW) and particularly those caring for elderly patients. Various approaches are investigated to improve safety for HCW and patients. One promising avenue is the use of robots. Here, we model infectious spread based on real spatio-temporal precise personal interactions from a geriatric unit and test different scenarios of robotic integration. We find a significant mitigation of contamination rates when robots specifically replace a moderate fraction of high-risk healthcare workers, who have a high number of contacts with patients and other HCW. While the impact of robotic integration is significant across a range of reproductive number R0, the largest effect is seen when R0 is slightly above its critical value. Our analysis suggests that a moderate-sized robotic integration can represent an effective measure to significantly reduce the spread of pathogens with Covid-19 transmission characteristics in a small hospital unit.

Medical and surgical management of acute spinal injury during pregnancy: A case series in a third-world country.

BACKGROUND: There is scant literature describing the management of acute spinal injury in pregnant patients. Here, we report our experience with five cases of pregnant patients including three females who suffered acute traumatic spinal cord injuries (SCIs). METHODS: This retrospective study evaluated five pregnant women presenting with traumatic spinal injuries over a 16-month period. All were assessed using the International Standards for Neurological Classification of Spinal Cord Injury Patients and the American Spine Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS). RESULTS: Three patients sustained SCIs: two cervical spine (C4 AIS-A and C5 AIS-B) and one thoracolumbar junction fracture dislocation (T11 AIS-A). Two patients required surgical stabilization during pregnancy, with one undergoing surgery after delivery. All three patients subsequently delivered healthy newborns. The remaining two patients without neurologic deficits at admission were treated conservatively; one had a healthy child, whereas the other patient aborted the baby due to the initial trauma. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates that the same surgical principals may be applied to pregnant women as to routine patients with SCIs. Further studies with greater patient data should be performed to better develop significant guidelines for the management of pregnant patients with spinal injuries.