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Introduction
The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 hit Italy by the end of February and rapidly spread from Lombardy to the rest of the country, with a number of fatalities beyond 31 000. Although all regions have reported having patients with COVID-19, the highest number of identified cases was in the provinces of eastern Lombardy.1 Several case reports and small series also suggested an association between COVID-19 and cerebrovascular events, and immune or inflammatory-mediated peripheral and central nervous system (CNS) involvement.2 3
To date, however, no comprehensive large surveys on the impact of COVID-19 on neurological status of patients presenting at the emergency room have been published. In fact, still little is known on which are the most common acute neurological presentations in COVID-19 and whether they differ compared with patients without COVID-19 in terms of severity and outcomes.
The urgent drift to cope with the rapidly overwhelming number of simultaneously critical patients drew the conversion of the majority of neurological units into non-specialistic wards for broader and generic COVID-19 patient care. The converted units became spokes referring neurological patients to tertiary hub centres for specialty care. This led to the definition in tertiary centres of dedicated medical and nurse teams working in special neuro-COVID units in order to guarantee equal access to acute therapies.
The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of COVID-19 by recording clinical presentations, laboratory characteristics and management/outcomes of a series of …
Footnotes
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Contributors Conception and design of the study: APi, AB and APe. Acquisition and analysis of data: APi, AB, IL, SM, LP, EP, APe, EB, SB, LB, MB, SC, MC, AC, SCP, EC, VC, ID, MF, MG, SGa, NG, SGi, MG, AI, PL, MLo, FS, RR, BR, LR, AS, VV, IV, NZ, BB, MM, MLe, GZ, SF, SM, APa, RB, CP and AP. Drafting of the manuscript and figures: APi, AB and APe.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.