Disclaimer. The ESC Guidelines represent the views of the ESC and were produced after careful consideration of the scientific and medical knowledge, and the evidence available at the time of their publication. The ESC is not responsible in the event of any contradiction, discrepancy, and/or ambiguity between the ESC Guidelines and any other official recommendations or guidelines issued by the relevant public health authorities, in particular in relation to good use of healthcare or therapeutic strategies. Health professionals are encouraged to take the ESC Guidelines fully into account when exercising their clinical judgment, as well as in the determination and the implementation of preventive, diagnostic, or therapeutic medical strategies; however, the ESC Guidelines do not override, in any way whatsoever, the individual responsibility of health professionals to make appropriate and accurate decisions in consideration of each patient's health condition and in consultation with that patient and, where appropriate and/or necessary, the patient's caregiver. Nor do the ESC Guidelines exempt health professionals from taking into full and careful consideration the relevant official updated recommendations or guidelines issued by the competent public health authorities, in order to manage each patient's case in light of the scientifically accepted data pursuant to their respective ethical and professional obligations. It is also the health professional's responsibility to verify the applicable rules and regulations relating to drugs and medical devices at the time of prescription.

The outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) not only affected health and economics, but also its effect extended to include other aspects, such as the environment. Using Egypt as a case study, this paper presents the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on air pollution levels by studying nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), ozone (O 3 ), particulate matter represented in absorbing aerosol index (AAI), carbon monoxide (CO), and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The paper also highlights the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on other environmental indicators including environmental noise, medical and municipal solid wastes. The paper presents the Egyptian COVID-19 story from its different angles including the development of confirmed COVID-19 cases, containment measures from the government, the impact on the country’s economy and the national energy consumption so as to effectively evaluate the effect on both the air pollution levels and the other studied environmental indicators. For the other environmental indicators, a strong link was observed between COVID-19 lockdown and the reduction in environmental noise, beaches, surface and groundwater pollution. For environmental noise, this has been confirmed by officially governmental announcements which reported that the level of environmental noise in Egypt was reduced by about 75% during the lockdown period. On the other hand, there are some negative effects, including an increase in medical solid waste (from 70 to 300 ton/day), municipal solid waste, as well as a less efficient solid waste recycling process. For air pollution levels, the data were obtained from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency satellite data sets. The data for the lockdown period in 2020 have been extracted and compared to the corresponding months in the selected baseline period (2015-2019) to identify the effect that the lockdown period had on the air pollution levels in Egypt with focus on Cairo and Alexandria governorates. It was found that the AAI decreased by about 30%, the NO 2 decreased by 15 and 33% over Cairo and Alexandria governorates, respectively, and that the CO decreased by about 5% over both governorates. In addition, the GHG emissions in Egypt were reduced by at least 4% during the pandemic. In contrast, ozone levels increased by about 2% over Cairo and Alexandria governorates. It can be concluded that the implemented containment measures during COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in both positive and negative environmental impacts. The positive environmental impacts are not sustainable and deterioration on them is expected to occur after the lockdown as it was before the pandemic. Therefore, stricter laws must be enacted to protect the environment in Egypt.

Honey can be used as an alternative to traditional remedies for the prevention of dental caries and gingivitis following orthodontic treatment.

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Magnetic nanosorbents proved to be highly effective in inorganic and organic contaminants removal from aqueous solutions, especially nano zero valent iron (nZVI). The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of using nZVI in removing benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene (BTEX) contaminants from aqueous solutions. The nZVI and the standard BTEX solution were prepared in the laboratory. X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV spectrophotometry, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis were used for nZVI characterization. The effects of contact time, initial BTEX mixture concentration, adsorbent dose, temperature, and pH on the amount of BTEX absorbed were investigated. The highest removal efficiency of 97% for the BTEX mixture was achieved at a stirring rate of 100 rpm, temperature of 60°C, and pH 7. The minimum effective time for efficient removal was 30 min, while the effective dose for BTEX compounds removal was 0.22 g/L. The Freundlich model was the best fit of experimental data. An artificial neural network (ANN) was used to predict the BTEX removal efficiency. Modeling results showed that ANN with average absolute error of 0.6272% is reliable in describing the adsorption of BTEX onto the iron nanoparticles. It is estimated that the cost of BTEX removal by nZVI under the optimal conditions will be about 3.5 USD per cubic meter.

Nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) particles were investigated for the removal of methylene blue (MB) from aqueous solutions and the treatment of textile industry effluents. The nZVI material was characterized by XRD, TEM, EDS, FTIR, and SEM. It was demonstrated that several functional groups such as C-H, C = C, C-C, and C-O contributed to MB reduction. At initial MB concentration of 70 mg/L, the optimum pH was 6, achieving a removal efficiency of 72.1% using an nZVI dosage of 10 g/L, stirring rate of 150 rpm, and temperature of 30 °C within 30 min. The adsorption isotherm was described by the Langmuir model with monolayer coverage of 5.53 mg/g, and the Freundlich equation with multilayer adsorption capacity of 1.59 (mg/g)·(L/mg). The removal mechanisms of MB included reduction into colorless leuco-MB, precipitation as Fe(II)-MB, adsorption as ZVI-MB or FeOOH-MB, and/or degradation using OH radicals. The synthesized nZVI particles were applied to reduce various organic and inorganic compounds, as well as heavy metal ions from real textile wastewater samples. The removal efficiencies of COD, BOD, TN, TP, Cu, Zn, and Pb reached up to 91.9%, 87.5%, 65.2%, 78.1%, 100.0%, 29.6%, and 99.0%, respectively. The treatment cost of 1 m of textile wastewater was estimated as 1.66 $USD.

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