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Article Breast Cancer Management During the Covid Pandemic(Coll Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan, 2024) Sariyildiz, Gulcin Turkmen; Ayhan, Fikriye FigenObjective: To explore the impact of COVID-19 among both the newly diagnosed patients and patients under follow-up for breast cancer by focusing on patients' accessibility to management and comparing the distribution of them before and during pandemic. Study Design: Single -centric retrospective study. Place and Duration of the Study: Department of General Surgery and Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Atilim University, Medicana International Ankara Hospital, Ankara, Turkiye, from March 2018 to 2022. Methodology: The data were collected to analyse numbers and distributions of physician visits regarding breast cancer. Results: The mean age of patients was 55.98 +/- 12.60 years. The percentages of newly diagnosed cases showed similarity (7.37% vs. 9.79%) before and during the pandemic (p = 0.18). The number of imaging studies decreased by 53.33% in patients under follow-up (p = 0.006), despite screening tests showed a similar trend (p = 0.145). General surgery visits marked up (+44.6%), in contrast to plastic surgery visits (-42.04%, p <0.001). Patients' admissions decreased in many COVID-19 related clinics (pulmonology, emergency, internal medicine, and intensive care), but cardiology (+96.59%) and rehabilitation (+75%) admissions increased during the pandemic (p <0.001). The number of medical oncology and radiation oncology visits did not change (p >0.05). Conclusion: Total number of physician visits was similar before and during the pandemic despite the changing distribution. While COVID-19 led to markedly rising trends of surgical, cardiological, and rehabilitative management in patients with breast cancer, falling trends were seen in other specialities except oncology which showed a plateau during two years. The falling trends of visits to pulmonology, emergency, internal medicine, and intensive care clinics may be explained by crowded COVID-19 cases.Article Clinical and Laboratory Evaluation of Acute Pericarditis Associated With Antinuclear Antibodies Positivity(Bentham Science Publ Ltd, 2023) Dursun, Ali Dogan; Saricam, Ersin; Erdem, Hakan; Sariyildiz, Gulcin Turkmen; Ozyer, Esref Umut; Bozkurt, Engin; Cantekin, Omer FarukBackground Up to 30% of patients with acute pericarditis develop recurrent pericarditis. Acute pericarditis may be a manifestation of an underlying systemic autoimmune disease. Therefore, we evaluated the characteristics of patients with acute pericarditis according to antinuclear antibodies (ANA) positivity/negativity. Methods Participants with acute pericarditis and negative ANA (n=29), recurrent pericarditis with positive ANA (n=30) and healthy controls (n=11) were examined. The groups were compared using serum parameters (ANA, C-reactive protein, leucocyte count, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, total antioxidant status, nitric oxide (NO), and oxidative stress index (OSI)) and imaging techniques (electrocardiogram, echocardiography, cardiovascular magnetic resonance, and venous Doppler ultrasound). Results In females, acute pericarditis associated with ANA occurred more frequently (p<0.001). ANA-positive acute pericarditis had significantly lower NO and OSI (p<0.05 and p<0.001, respectively) and pericardial inflammation on magnetic resonance. We found a pulmonary embolism in one patient with positive ANA. Slow venous flow (SVF) occurred more often in acute pericarditis associated with ANA than in the ANA-negative group on venous ultrasound (p<0.05). The prevalence of positive ANAs was 1.6 times higher among SVF patients than in controls. Conclusion This study suggests that acute pericarditis associated with ANA is more common in middle-aged females. SVF and lower oxidative stress tests were more common in patients with ANA-associated acute pericarditis. Acute pericarditis associated with ANA could be considered as a hypercoagulable state. Therefore, all newly diagnosed pericarditis patients (especially females) should be checked for ANA positivity. Awareness of this coexistence should be promptly addressed to establish management strategies.
