TY  - JOUR
A1  - Krüger, Sören
A1  - Leskien, Miriam
A1  - Schuller, Patricia
A1  - Prifert, Christiane
A1  - Weißbrich, Benedikt
A1  - Vogel, Ulrich
A1  - Krone, Manuel
T1  - Performance and feasibility of universal PCR admission screening for SARS‐CoV‐2 in a German tertiary care hospital
JF  - Journal of Medical Virology
N2  - Anamnestic screening of symptoms and contact history is applied to identify coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) patients on admission. However, asymptomatic and presymptomatic patients remain undetected although the viral load may be high. In this retrospective cohort study, all hospitalized patients who received polymerase chain reaction (PCR) admission testing from March 26th until May 24th, 2020 were included. Data on COVID‐19‐specific symptoms and contact history to COVID‐19 cases were retrospectively extracted from patient files and from contact tracing notes. The compliance to the universal testing protocol was high with 90%. Out of 6940 tested patients, 27 new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus‐2 infections (0.4%) were detected. Seven of those COVID‐19 cases (26% of all new cases) were asymptomatic and had no positive contact history, but were identified through a positive PCR test. The number needed to identify an asymptomatic patient was 425 in the first wave of the epidemic, 1218 in the low incidence phase. The specificity of the method was above 99.9%. Universal PCR testing was highly accepted by staff as demonstrated by high compliance. The costs to detect one asymptomatic case in future studies need to be traded off against the costs and damage caused by potential outbreaks of COVID‐19.
KW  - admission screening
KW  - COVID‐19
KW  - infection control
KW  - SARS‐CoV‐2
KW  - testing strategy
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-238971
VL  - 93
IS  - 5
SP  - 2890
EP  - 2898
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Adolph, Jonas E.
A1  - Fleischhack, Gudrun
A1  - Gaab, Christine
A1  - Mikasch, Ruth
A1  - Mynarek, Martin
A1  - Rutkowski, Stefan
A1  - Schüller, Ulrich
A1  - Pfister, Stefan M.
A1  - Pajtler, Kristian W.
A1  - Milde, Till
A1  - Witt, Olaf
A1  - Bison, Brigitte
A1  - Warmuth-Metz, Monika
A1  - Kortmann, Rolf-Dieter
A1  - Dietzsch, Stefan
A1  - Pietsch, Torsten
A1  - Timmermann, Beate
A1  - Tippelt, Stephan
T1  - Systemic chemotherapy of pediatric recurrent ependymomas: results from the German HIT-REZ studies
JF  - Journal of Neuro-Oncology
N2  - Purpose
Survival in recurrent ependymoma (EPN) depends mainly on the extent of resection achieved. When complete resection is not feasible, chemotherapy is often used to extend progression-free and overall survival. However, no consistent effect of chemotherapy on survival has been found in patients with recurrent EPN.

Methods
Systemic chemotherapeutic treatment of 138 patients enrolled in the German HIT-REZ-studies was analyzed. Survival depending on the use of chemotherapy, disease-stabilization rates (RR), duration of response (DOR) and time to progression (TTP) were estimated.

Results
Median age at first recurrence was 7.6 years (IQR: 4.0–13.6). At first recurrence, median PFS and OS were 15.3 (CI 13.3–20.0) and 36.9 months (CI 29.7–53.4), respectively. The Hazard Ratio for the use of chemotherapy in local recurrences in a time-dependent Cox-regression analysis was 0.99 (CI 0.74–1.33). Evaluable responses for 140 applied chemotherapies were analyzed, of which sirolimus showed the best RR (50%) and longest median TTP [11.51 (CI 3.98; 14.0) months] in nine patients, with the strongest impact found when sirolimus was used as a monotherapy. Seven patients with progression-free survival > 12 months after subtotal/no-resection facilitated by chemotherapy were found. No definitive survival advantage for any drug in a specific molecularly defined EPN type was found.

Conclusion
No survival advantage for the general use of chemotherapy in recurrent EPN was found. In cases with incomplete resection, chemotherapy was able to extend survival in individual cases. Sirolimus showed the best RR, DOR and TTP out of all drugs analyzed and may warrant further investigation.
KW  - ependymoma
KW  - chemotherapy
KW  - recurrence
KW  - children
KW  - sirolimus
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-308302
SN  - 0167-594X
SN  - 1573-7373
VL  - 155
IS  - 2
ER  -