Managing diabetes in diabetic patients with COVID: where do we start from?

Aims COVID-19 has and still is sweeping away the national health systems worldwide. In this review, we sought to determine the evidence base proofs on the antidiabetic treatment capable to reduce the risk of COVID-19-related mortality. Methods We have performed a systematic search of published articles using PubMed, and EMBASE from March 2020 to March 31st, 2021. We excluded editorials, commentary, letters to the editor, reviews, and studies that did not have mortality as an outcome. For metformin and insulin only, we performed a meta-analysis using Cochrane RevMan 5.2. Results Among antidiabetic drugs, metformin was the only drug associated with a reduced risk of mortality. Conversely, insulin appears associated with an increased risk. The other classes of drugs were neutral. Conclusions The totality of articles reports retrospective data strongly affected by “channeling bias” so that most of the existing results on each class of drugs are driven by the phenotype of patients likely to receive that specific drug by prescription.

Perioperative Use of Dobutamine in Cardiac Surgery and Adverse Cardiac Outcome

Background Catecholamines, mainly dobutamine, are often administered without institutional guidelines or prespecified algorithms in cardiac surgery. The current study assessed the consequences on clinical outcome of catecholamines simply based on the clinical judgment of the anesthesiologists after cardiopulmonary bypass in adult cardiac surgery. Methods Consecutive patients were enrolled in a nonrandomized cohort study. Factors associated with perioperative use of catecholamines and with outcomes were recorded prospectively to conduct bias adjustment, including propensity scores. Major cardiac morbidity (i.e., ventricular arrhythmia, use of an intraaortic balloon pump and postoperative myocardial infarction) and all-cause intrahospital mortality were the primary and secondary endpoints, respectively. Results are expressed as odds ratio (OR) [95% confidence interval]. Results During the study, 84 of 657 patients (13%) received catecholamines, most often dobutamine (76 of 84, 90%). A higher incidence of both major cardiac morbidity (30 vs. 9%; P < 0.001; OR, 4.2 [2.5-7.3]) and all-cause intrahospital mortality (8 vs. 1%; P < 0.001; OR, 12.9 [3.7-45.2]) was observed in the catecholamine group compared with the control group. After adjusting for channeling bias and confounding factors, catecholamine administration remained significantly associated with major cardiac morbidity after propensity score stratification (OR, 2.1 [1.0-4.4]; P < 0.05), propensity score covariance analysis (OR, 2.3 [1.0-5.0]; P < 0.05), marginal structural models (OR, 1.8 [1.3-2.5]; P < 0.001), and propensity score matching (OR, 3.0 [1.2-7.3]; P < 0.02), but not with all-cause intrahospital mortality. Conclusions These results suggest that dobutamine should only be administered when the benefit is judged to outweigh the risks.