Detection of COVID-19 from chest X-ray images: Boosting the performance with convolutional neural network and transfer learning.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a pandemic that has caused thousands of casualties and impacts all over the world. Most countries are facing a shortage of COVID-19 test kits in hospitals due to the daily increase in the number of cases. Early detection of COVID-19 can protect people from severe infection. Unfortunately, COVID-19 can be misdiagnosed as pneumonia or other illness and can lead to patient death. Therefore, in order to avoid the spread of COVID-19 among the population, it is necessary to implement an automated early diagnostic system as a rapid alternative diagnostic system. Several researchers have done very well in detecting COVID-19; however, most of them have lower accuracy and overfitting issues that make early screening of COVID-19 difficult. Transfer learning is the most successful technique to solve this problem with higher accuracy. In this paper, we studied the feasibility of applying transfer learning and added our own classifier to automatically classify COVID-19 because transfer learning is very suitable for medical imaging due to the limited availability of data. In this work, we proposed a CNN model based on deep transfer learning technique using six different pre-trained architectures, including VGG16, DenseNet201, MobileNetV2, ResNet50, Xception, and EfficientNetB0. A total of 3886 chest X-rays (1200 cases of COVID-19, 1341 healthy and 1345 cases of viral pneumonia) were used to study the effectiveness of the proposed CNN model. A comparative analysis of the proposed CNN models using three classes of chest X-ray datasets was carried out in order to find the most suitable model. Experimental results show that the proposed CNN model based on VGG16 was able to accurately diagnose COVID-19 patients with 97.84% accuracy, 97.90% precision, 97.89% sensitivity, and 97.89% of F1-score. Evaluation of the test data shows that the proposed model produces the highest accuracy among CNNs and seems to be the most suitable choice for COVID-19 classification. We believe that in this pandemic situation, this model will support healthcare professionals in improving patient screening.

Nursing effect of central venous catheter combined with empathy nursing on AIDS patients / 中国实用护理杂志

Objective:To analyze the nursing effect of central venous catheter (CVC) infusion combined with empathy nursing on AIDS patients.Methods:A total of 129 AIDS patients who were hospitalized for infusion at Beijing You'an Hospital, Capital Medical University from June 2014 to June 2016 were selected as the control group. Another 129 AIDS patients from August 2016 to August 2018 were selected as the observation group. The control group was given ordinary infusion needle infusion and conventional psychological nursing, and the observation group was given CVC infusion combined with empathic nursing. The clinical nursing effect of the two groups of patients was analyzed.Results:The infusion fluency rate, vascular damage rate, nurse puncture rate, and occupational exposure rate in the observation group were 91.47% (118/129), 10.85% (14/129), 0, 0, and the control group was 82.94% (107/129), 20.93% (27/129), 6.20% (8/129), 6.20% (8/129), the difference between the two groups was statistically significant ( χ 2 values were 4.188-8.224, P <0.05 or 0.01). After 3 months of intervention, the anxiety and depression (Self-rating Anxiely Scale/Self-rating Depression Scale) scores of the observation group were 47.87 ± 5.43 and 45.02 ± 5.61, which were significantly lower than the control group, which were 51.15 ±6.97 and 49.11 ± 6.48. The difference was statistically significant ( t values were 3.320, 4.268, P <0.01). After 3 months of intervention, the treatment compliance rate in the observation group was 92.24% (119/129), which was significantly higher than 83.72% (108/129) in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant ( t value was 4.419, P <0.05). After 3 months of intervention, the CD 4+ T lymph count and HIV viral load in the observation group were (378.25 ± 49.04)/μl, (2.86 ± 0.53) igIU/ml, and the control group were (342.17 ± 43.47)/μl, (3.13 ± 0.66) igIU/ml, the improvement effect of the observation group was significantly better than that of the control group ( t values were 3.559, 2.853, P <0.01). Conclusion:CVC infusion combined with empathic nursing can significantly improve the anxiety and depression of AIDS patients, improve treatment compliance and infusion fluency, reduce vascular damage rate, related infection rate, nurse puncture rate and occupational exposure rate, and good nursing effect.

Orem self-care nursing for patients with liver cirrhosis based on comprehensive evaluation software system of organ function / 中国基层医药

Objective To investigate the clinical effect of Orem self-care nursing for patients with liver cirrhosis according to the comprehensive evaluation software system of organ function.Methods 80 patients with hepatitis B cirrhosis in our hospital were enrolled.The patients' condition was evaluated with comprehensive evaluation software system of organ function.According to the severity of the disease,Orem self-care option was taken.Chronic liver disease questionnaire(CLDQ) was used to evaluate the quality of life if the patients' condition permitted.Liver health knowledge questionnaire was used to evaluate the awareness rate of liver disease.1 month after discharge,the patients' quality of life and health knowledge were measured.Results Patients were discharged after 1 month in the average quality of life score of abdominal symptoms,systemic symptoms,fatigue,activity ability,emotion and anxiety respectively (5.74±1.52)points,(5.47±1.36) points,(5.83±1.57) points,(5.90±1.22) points,(5.79±1.67)points and (5.10±1.23)points,which were significantly higher than the first score (4.52±1.31)points,(4.17±1.48)points,(4.18±1.75)points,(4.26±0.98)points,(4.40±1.32)points and (4.35±1.08)points,the differences were statistically significant(t=-3.107,-3.527,-4.875,-4.963,-3.670,-2.805,all P<0.05).Patients were discharged from the hospital 1 month after liver disease knowledge rate was evaluated for the first time increased significantly(all P<0.05).Conclusion On the basis of patients' Organ function evaluation carried out for patients with liver cirrhosis Orem self-care care,the clinical effect is good,it is worthy of promotion.

Photothermal effects of metallic carbon nanotubes on human breast cancer cells / 药学学报

SWNTs are a mixture of 1/3 metallic SWNTs (m-SWNTs) and 2/3 semiconducting SWNTs (s-SWNTs). It is desirable to separate the metallic SWNTs from the semi-conducting ones. In this study m-SWNTs was separated by using a poly[(m-phenylenevinylene)-alt-(p-phenylenevinylene)] (PmPV) derivative and used as photo-thermal media instead of SWNTs. The separation effects of m-SWNTs were evaluated by Raman spectra, molecular modeling and TEM images. The effects of m-SWNTs on MCF-7 cell proliferation and apoptosis were evaluated with MTT assay and flow cytometry, respectively. m-SWNTs were separated with high purity. A strong inhibition of MCF-7 cell growth was observed with the m-SWNTs under near-infrared (NIR) light irradiation. Our results will be helpful for the potential applications of m-SWNTs in clinical photothermal cancer therapy.