To investigate the relationship between damaged lung assessed by chest computed tomography (CT) scan and laboratory biochemical parameters with the aim of finding other diagnostic tools. Patients who underwent chest CT for suspected Corona Virus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia at the emergency department admission in the first phase of COVID-19 epidemic in Italy were retrospectively analyzed. Patients with both negative chest CT and absence of the novel coronavirus in nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) swabs were excluded from the study. A total of 462 patients with positive CT scans for interstitial pneumonia were included in the study (250 males and 212 females, mean age 57 ± 17 years, range 18–89). Of these, 344 were positive to RT-PCR test, 118 were negative to double RT-PCR tests. CTs were analyzed for quantification of affected lung volume visually and by dedicated software. Statistical analysis to evaluate the relationship between laboratory analyses and CT patterns and amount of damaged lung related with COVID-19 pneumonia was performed in 2 groups of patients: positive RT-PCR COVID-19 group and negative RT-PCR COVID-19 group, but both with positive CT scans for interstitial pneumonia. Lymphocytopenia, C-reactive protein (CRP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), d -dimer, and fibrinogen increased levels occurred in most patients without statistically significant differences between the 2 groups with CT scans suggestive for COVID-19. In fact, in both groups the volume of lung damage was strongly associated with altered laboratory test results, even for patients with negative RT-PCR test. The decreased number of lymphocytes, and the increased levels of CRP, LDH, d -dimer, and fibrinogen levels are associated with SARS-CoV 2 related pneumonia. This may be useful as an additional diagnostic tool in patients with double negative RT-PCR assay and with highly suspected clinic and chest CT features for COVID-19 to isolate patients in a pandemic period.
Subgap optical absorption investigations have been used to study the influence of increasing ion dose on the properties of ion implanted layers of Si and GaAs. Beside the spectral region corresponding to the band edge region, a second region at lower energy, also exhibiting an exponential behavior but with a substantially larger value of the inverse logarithmic slope, has been observed in all the investigated samples. A common trend has been observed for ion implanted Si and GaAs in the dependence of the values of the lower energy region inverse logarithmic slope as a function of the implantation dose, and it depended on the presence or not of amorphous material in the implanted layer. The results are discussed in terms of a possible evolution of gap states responsible for the observed features
A method based on the analysis of both the amplitude and phase of the photothermal deflection spectroscopy signal which enables one to locate surface states on the front or rear surface of semiconductor wafers and to measure their absorption. The procedure also allows the determination of the sample thermal conductivity
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