COVID-19 Pandemic Response
The onset of the Coronavirus pandemic was a sudden shock to healthcare systems around the country. Since first appearing in Dec 2019 in Wuhan, China, and has spread to almost 4 million people worldwide. The disease itself has been the wild west for medicine; with no studied treatment and unpredictable patterns of disease progression it has pushed our healthcare systems to come up with creative ways to handle the challenges a pandemic brings.
Unfortunately doing a podcast on COVID-19 has been difficult to do due to the quickly changing data and conversations surrounding the disease. We have, however, been working hard in the background digesting the information and coming up with a plan to treat these patients; many of the physicians from the pulmcast team have been involved in discovering more about the disease and sharing their thoughts.
Dr. Jermaine Jackson, Dr. Charles Wilmer and Dr. Christine Zurawski were all featured on the Atlanta Evening News with Erick Erickson
Dr. Patterson was featured on WSB-TV 2 Atlanta discussing increased issues with blood clots in coronavirus patients
Dr. Hedelius was on 11Alive news, describing the varying clinical response to the disease by different patient populations
Dr. Amy Case was on Fox 5 Atlanta discussing the use of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients
Dr. Amy Case was on the Atlanta Journal Constitution discussing the use of remdesivir in COVID-19 patients
Dr. Ryan Carrick was featured on WSB-TV2 Atlanta discussing the damage COVID-19 does to your lungs
Dr. Amy Case was featured on the Atlanta Journal Constitution discussing outpatient use of hydroxychloroquine
Dr. Mayur Patel was featured on the Newnan Times Harold discussing our approach to treating COVID-19
Dr. Kushboo Chokshi, Dr. Ashar Usmani, Dr. Jennifer Butler and Dr. Ogbonna Ogbu were featured on the Henry Herald discussing the frontline response to COVID-19
COVID-19 Grand Rounds
Even more, we hosted an intersystem COVID-19 Grand rounds where providers across Atlanta came together to talk about topics related to COVID-19. Speakers from Piedmont, Emory, Wellstar, Grady, CHOA and others contributed to our panelists.
Session 1: Critical Care Management of COVID19
Our first session was regarding Critical Care Management and topics such as hypoxia, hypercoagulability and shock. Take a listen to our first discussion below. We had over 500 online participants between Zoom and YouTube Live!
Session 2: Medical Therapies in COVID 19
Our panelists discussed the various therapies and the evidence (or lack thereof) behind each one. Therapies discussed included Hydroxychloroquine, Redmesivir, Convalescent Plasms, and Immune Mediators.
Stay Tuned for Session 3 (hopefully next week) on Testing!
Overall, the impact that COVID-19 has had on all of us has been very real. But through all of this - more than anything - we have come together, all in effort to fight this virus. And our fight has only begun.