COVID-19 area

Since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, CPO Piedmont has been engaged in the collection and analysis of data relating to the new Coronavirus through the following studies.

  • PLACO-COVID study
    Evaluate whether the infusion of plasma containing anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies obtained from subjects recovering from COVID-19, or of plasma from donors not in contact with SARS-CoV-2, in triple administration every 48 hours, in addition to standard treatment, is more effective than standard treatment alone on the outcome of COVID-19 patients with recent development or recent worsening (max 5 days) of acute respiratory failure requiring ventilatory support.
     
  • Monitoring of accesses with diagnosis of COVID-19 to the AOU City of Health and Science of Turin
    Monitors COVID-19 cases with access to the AOU for descriptive purposes (the frequency of new diagnoses, access to the emergency room, admissions and referrals to home or other facilities, clinical and epidemiological characteristics at the entrance, intra-hospital path , treatment modalities, incidence of complications, outcome) and analytical (with estimation of the prognostic significance of the personal and clinical characteristics, of the individual conditions and risk factors, of previous and in-hospital therapies on the evolution of clinical severity, on need and type of ventilatory support, duration of hospitalization, recovery, mortality, re-admission to hospital and survival 6 months from diagnosis).
     
  • Impact of COVID-19 in the primary care setting in Piedmont
    Evaluate the response of the territory, in particular the contribution of General Practitioners (GPs), in the management of COVID-19 patients. Investigate which symptoms best predict the outcome of the swab in order to optimize available resources and make the GP's role more efficient in identifying new cases.
     
  • Epidemiological studies on SARS-CoV-2
    Evaluates characteristics associated with clinical severity and mortality in cohorts of COVID-19 patients.
     
  • Chest ultrasound in patients with dyspnea in the Emergency Department
    The main objective of the study is the evaluation of the accuracy of the integrated approach, based on clinical evaluation and thoracic ultrasound, in identifying the cardiogenic etiology among patients presenting to the emergency room with acute dyspnea. In a second phase, the project verifies whether the diagnostic accuracy of the integrated approach is higher than that of the standard approach (clinical, chest X-ray and Nt-proBNP dosage). During this subsequent phase of the study, the variability of the ultrasound method, due to technical variables, is also evaluated on a sub-cohort of patients evaluated in the ER for acute dyspnea. All these evaluations were repeated to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy in the differential diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia.


In some studies and projects of the CPO already underway and relating to other issues, specific investigative initiatives dedicated to COVID-19 have been launched. For example, in the context of the NINFEA and Piccolipiù cohort studies, new questionnaires on COVID-19 were administered to the participants in order to investigate both aspects of a purely clinical nature and the socioeconomic effects that the pandemic had in the family.