Connellmagnussen6278
BACKGROUND Patients who were diagnosed with hematologic malignancies (HM) had a higher risk of acute kidney injury (AKI). This study applies the Bayesian networks (BNs) to investigate the interrelationships between AKI and its risk factors among HM patients, and to evaluate the predictive and inferential ability of BNs model in different clinical settings. METHODS During 2014 and 2015, a total of 2501 inpatients with HM were recruited in this retrospective study conducted in a tertiary hospital, Shanghai of China. Patients' demographics, medical history, clinical and laboratory records on admission were extracted from the electronic medical records. Candidate predictors of AKI were screened in the group-LASSO (gLASSO) regression, and then they were incorporated into BNs analysis for further interrelationship modeling and disease prediction. RESULTS Of 2395 eligible patients with HM, 370 episodes were diagnosed with AKI (15.4%). Patients with multiple myeloma (24.1%) and leukemia (23.9%) had higher incidences rspective to reveal the intrinsic connections between AKI and its risk factors in HM patients. The BNs predictive model could help us to calculate the probability of AKI at the individual level, and follow the tide of e-alert and big-data realize the early detection of AKI.BACKGROUND Twice-weekly maintenance hemodialysis sessions in patients with end stage renal disease are commonly practiced due to economic constraints in developing countries including Eritrea. To ameliorate the paucity of data on the subject, our study aims to shed light on the patterns of intradialytic complications exclusively in patients undergoing twice-weekly hemodialysis in the country. METHODS A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from March 01 to July 31, 2018 at Dialysis Unit of Orotta National Referral Hospital, Asmara, Eritrea in patients with end stage renal disease undergoing twice-weekly hemodialysis. Hemodialysis sessions were assessed for intradialytic complications. Data were fed into and analyzed using Epi-Info and Microsoft Excel. RESULTS A total of 29 patients were included in the five-month study period. Males were 19 (65.5%) and females were 10 (34.5%). More than half of the patients had diabetes. selleck products Out of the total 573 hemodialysis sessions, 176 (30.7%) of them involved one orn can prevent excessive interdialytic weight gain and thus lowering the risk of intradialytic hypotension related with higher ultrafiltration rate. Being the first study in the country on dialysis complications, we recommend further large scale research in the future.BACKGROUND There is a decreasing trend in the proportion of individuals who perceive e-cigarettes to be less harmful than conventional cigarettes across the UK, Europe and the US. It is important to assess whether this may influence the use of e-cigarettes. We aimed to estimate, using a time series approach, whether changes in harm perceptions among current tobacco smokers have been associated with changes in the prevalence of e-cigarette use in England, with and without stratification by age, sex and social grade. METHODS Respondents were from the Smoking Toolkit Study, which involves monthly cross-sectional household surveys of individuals aged 16+ years in England. Data were aggregated monthly on ~ 300 current tobacco smokers between 2014 and 2019. The outcome variable was the prevalence of e-cigarette use. The explanatory variable was the proportion of smokers who endorsed the belief that e-cigarettes are less harmful than combustible cigarettes. Covariates were cigarette (vs. non-cigarette combustible) current smoking prevalence, past-year quit attempt prevalence and national smoking mass media expenditure. Unadjusted and adjusted autoregressive integrated moving average with exogeneous variables (ARIMAX) models were fitted. RESULTS For every 1% decrease in the mean prevalence of current tobacco smokers who endorsed the belief that e-cigarettes are less harmful than combustible cigarettes, the mean prevalence of e-cigarette use decreased by 0.48% (βadj = 0.48, 95% CI = 0.25-0.71, p less then .001). Marginal age and sex differences were observed, whereby significant associations were observed in older (but not in young) adults and in men (but not in women). No differences by social grade were detected. CONCLUSIONS Between 2014 and 2019 in England, at the population level, monthly changes in the prevalence of accurate harm perceptions among current tobacco smokers were strongly associated with changes in e-cigarette use.BACKGROUND Catheter ablation therapy involving isolation of pulmonary veins (PVs) from the left atrium is performed to terminate atrial fibrillation (AF). Unfortunately, standalone PV isolation procedure has shown to be a suboptimal success with AF continuation or recurrence. One reason, especially in patients with persistent or high-burden paroxysmal AF, is known to be due to the formation of repeating-pattern AF sources with a meandering core inside the atria. However, there is a need for accurate mapping and localization of these sources during catheter ablation. METHODS A novel AF source area probability (ASAP) mapping algorithm was developed and evaluated in 2D and 3D atrial simulated tissues with various arrhythmia scenarios and a retrospective study with three cases of clinical human AF. The ASAP mapping analyzes the electrograms collected from a multipole diagnostic catheter that is commonly used during catheter ablation procedure to intelligently sample the atria and delineate the trajectory path of f the meandering repeating-pattern AF sources as AF ablation targets for effective AF termination. Our algorithm could improve the success of AF catheter ablation therapy by locating and subsequently targeting patient-specific and repeating-pattern AF sources inside the atria.PURPOSE The latissimus dorsi muscle has long been used in breast cancer (BC) patients for reconstruction. This study aimed to compare early stage BC patients who had partial mastectomy (PM) with mini latissimus dorsi flap (MLDF) and subcutaneous mastectomy with implant (MI) with respect to quality of life (QoL), cosmetic outcome (CO), and survival rates. PATIENTS AND METHODS The data of patients who underwent PM + MLDF (Group 1) and M + I (Group 2) between January 2010 and January 2018 were evaluated. Both groups were compared in terms of demographics, clinical and pathological characteristics, surgical morbidity, survival, quality of life, and cosmetic results. The EORTC-QLQ C30 and EORTC-QLO BR23 questionnaires and the Japanese Breast Cancer Society (JBCS) Cosmetic Evaluation Scale were used to assess the quality of life and the cosmetic outcome, respectively. RESULTS A total of 317 patients were included in the study, 242 (76.3%) of them in group 1 and 75 (23.6%) of them in group 2. Median follow-up time was 56 (14-116) months.