Projects Delivered

Uncertainty remains as to the diagnostic performance of the combined nasal and throat swab, particularly in patients presenting late following the onset of symptoms when the viral load may be lower.

This study will define the performance of the combined nasal and throat swab in consecutive persons admitted to hospital with symptoms of COVID-19. It will also determine whether this differs in certain groups of patients, and help us to understand the value of repeated testing in those where the first test is negative.
 

You can view the publication based on this project on the BMC Infectious Diseases website: https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-05976-1

Procalciton in is a marker of bacterial infection which can be measured in the blood. Data has shown it is able to be used as a prognostic marker in COVID-19 patients and can also potentially be used to identify secondary bacterial infection or disease becoming more severe.

This project aims to gather data from NHS Lothian patients to assess how this test is being used by clinicians in NHS Lothian and what the data means for patients. This will ultimately help understand the true meaning of a procalciton in test result and how it can be best used to aid patient care.

COVID-19 can cause multiple medical problems, for example pneumonia, kidney failure, confusion, blood clots etc. that involve different specialists, in the same patient. In the past each specialist would make their own arrangement to see or review the patient after discharge and perform blood tests, x-rays etc.

Multiple visits to different departments are not an ideal way of caring for patients, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason we are designing a new way of reviewing patients after discharge that involves the specialists talking to each other, making a plan for each patient and if the patient needs tests or an appointment, these will done in one hospital visit.

We hope this will improve the patient experience and avoid unnecessary risks.

The COVID-19 pandemic requires an urgent effort to both understand the disease and its impact on people, and also research to rapidly find effective treatments to prevent and treat the illness and its consequences for people. Within NHS Lothian there has been a coordinated collaborative approach to undertaking research, and many people have had the opportunity to participate in a range of different important research studies.

As we move forward, and the numbers of COVID-19 cases decreases, we want to be able to ensure we can coordinate our research efforts to ensure people continue to have the chance to participate in important studies.

This project will use routine data collected within NHS Lothian to provide reports about how many people are admitted to hospital with COVID, where they are treated, and how their illness progresses. This information will be used to plan how best to organise research in the region.

When patients are tested for COVID on admission to hospital with a nasal swab it is possible that a negative result may be a false negative i.e. they test negative even though they do have the disease. Testing antibodies on admission could help to identify more COVID positive patients and therefore treat the patient accordingly.

The purpose of this project is to find out how best antibody tests can help with COVID diagnosis – particularly where a COVID test is negative and antibody is positive.

The project will initially look at the results of the Abbott laboratory antibody blood tests but, depending on results, may widen to include other company’s antibody tests.

COVID-19 is an infection caused by a new coronavirus strain that has resulted in a global spread. Our understanding of this condition is improving with increasing scientific evidence. So far, we know that elderly patients and those with heart problems are at increased risk of getting the virus and having worse outcomes. Furthermore, evidence suggests that in some cases this infection has a detrimental effect on the heart muscle, which in turn is associated with worse outcomes. The frequency of this problem and the underlying mechanisms are not well understood.

We propose a project to determine how common and serious are heart problems in patients with COVID-19 through analysis of blood tests and health information data on all consecutive patients who presented to hospital in NHS Lothian and were tested for suspected COVID-19. This project will allow us to determine the need for additional investigations and inform clinical care.