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Patient and family communication is a well-known factor associated with improved patient outcomes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, visitation restrictions meant communication with patients and their families became a challenge, particularly with intubated patients in the intensive care unit. As the hospital filled with COVID-19 patients, medical students and physicians at Albany Medical Center identified the urgent need for a better communication method with families. In response, the COVID-19 Compassion Coalition (CCC) was formed. The CCC’s goal was to decrease the distress felt by families unable to visit their hospitalized loved ones. They developed a streamlined process for videoconferencing between patients on COVID-19 units and their families by using tablets. Having medical students take responsibility for this process allowed nurses and physicians to focus on patient care. Incorporating videoconferencing technology can allow physicians and nurses to better connect with families, especially during unprecedented times like a pandemic.

In the United States, there are more than 400,000 girls and young women of reproductive-age with a history of cancer. Cancer treatments including surgery, chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and radiation can adversely impact their reproductive health. This review discusses infertility, contraception, and adverse pregnancy and child health outcomes in reproductive-aged cancer survivors, in order to increase awareness of these health risks for survivors and their healthcare providers. Infertility rates are modestly higher, while rates of using contraception and using highly effective contraceptive methods are lower in cancer survivors than in women without a history of cancer. During pregnancy, preterm births are also more common in survivors, resulting in more low birth weight offspring. Children of cancer survivors do not have more childhood cancers, birth defects or chromosomal abnormalities than the general population, with the exception of families with hereditary cancer. Reproductive risks in survivors depend on cancer treatment exposures. For example, women with prior abdominal or pelvic radiation have additional risks of small for gestational age offspring and stillbirths, while those with prior chest radiation or anthracycline exposures have higher risks of cardiomyopathy. To help survivors achieve their reproductive goals safely, family planning and preconception counseling are central to survivorship care.

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The objective is to study the effects of high glucose on the morphological changes and to observe the expression of apoptosis regulatory proteins in the developing retina in-vivo using Zebrafish embryos. Wild type male and female zebrafish were allowed for normal mating and the fertilized eggs were collected and exposed to hyperglycemic conditions (25mMol D-Glucose) for 96 hours. The embryos were subjected to various morphological and histological analyses in a time dependent manner. The embryos showed morphological defects such as body curvature, abnormal eye shape and low pigmentation of the eye in the high glucose induced embryos compared to the control. Histomorphometry studies using H&E stained slides showed increased thickness of GCL and INL and thinning of the IPL in the retina of high glucose exposed embryos when compared to its time matched control. Furthermore, the TUNEL assay and modified trichrome staining indicated apoptosis of many cells in the high glucose induced group compared to the control. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) findings revealed that expression of Bax, Caspase3 & Caspase9 was increased with decreased expression of Bcl-2 in the high glucose treated group compared to control. From the present data it is concluded that gestational exposure to high glucose stimulate apoptotic cell in the developing retinal layers via activating the pro-apoptotic and repressing the anti-apoptotic proteins.