Chinese medics at front line of treating COVID-19 patients share experience with Italian peers

An online forum dedicated to sharing Chinese medical workers' front line experience of treating COVID-19 cases with their counterparts in Italy, a country currently severely affected by the pandemic, and other countries and regions, was held on Thursday.

Chinese experts from the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, which had dispatched nearly 200 doctors and nurses to Wuhan, the hardest-hit region by the contagion in China, for medical support, introduced in detail the treatment solutions for patients in different conditions and rehabilitation management as well as prevention of the spread of the disease during the forum, which was held as a special program at China Global Television Network.

The forum was jointly held by the Chinese Alliance for Rare Diseases, the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and San Raffaele Research Hospital and Niguarda Hospital – two major hospitals in Milano, and supported by Dompé, an Italian biopharmaceutical company with a history of more than 120 years.

Between 10 and 20 percent of the COVID-19 cases need to be hospitalized for medication and receive oxygen support and nutrition support, and their health conditions need to be observed closely to avoid deterioration, said Zhang Shuyang, Party chief and vice-president of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital and vice-chairwoman of the Chinese Alliance for Rare Diseases.

Main treatment measures for severe patients involved comprehensive medications, treatments and nursing care, and intubation should be performed timely when it is necessary. Ventilation in prone position also worked as a respiratory support for severe patients when necessary, she said.

"We also suggested the doctors to screen the coagulation index for all the severe patients as our latest research result recently published on the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the novel coronavirus could cause thrombosis through autoimmune mechanisms," said Zhang.

The Italian experts mentioned that Dompé with a supercomputing platform has been collaborating with 18 research institutions worldwide, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, to screen candidate molecules with potential therapeutic effects for the research and development of anti-epidemic drugs.