Douglasstraarup3512

Ascertain whether a demographic analysis of the archives of an annual national meeting head and neck section could reflect contemporary issues in our specialty and compare the results with available analysis from other ORL-HNS meetings.

A review of all accepted abstracts of Sylvester O'Halloran Symposium-H&N section, from 2005 to 2020.

ORL-HNS was responsible for 77% of the accepted abstracts. Presentations on H&N Malignancy were predominantly from ORL-HNS (84%), while Thyroid presentations were divided with General Surgery (45%). Medical students have appeared in recent years and produced 4% of papers at the last meeting while more junior presenters are participating with an increasing female preponderance (ranging from 7 to 53%). The overall publication rate was 27%, where male authors had a rate of 28% and females 22%. selleckchem Similar papers published subsequent to the relevant meeting were identified from other institutions in 40% of presentations.

This review of presentations at a surgical meetinofacial. Our publication rate of 27% is similar to other ORL-HNS meetings. Approximately 10% are published over 5 years after the meeting but presenters should endeavour to publish earlier as others may usurp publication in up to 40% of presentations.

Adoption of the International Association of Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Group (IADPSG) criteria for diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) varies worldwide. Early detection of women at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) following GDM enables initiation of measures to delay disease onset.

To determine the 4-year cumulative incidence and risk factors for developing abnormal glucose tolerance (AGT) among women with previous GDM using modified IADPSG criteria. Additionally, to review post-natal attendance at diabetes screening and the impact of post-partum lifestyle modifications and breastfeeding on the risk of T2DM development.

Four hundred twenty-six women with a prior history of GDM were invited to participate in the study, 4years after the index pregnancy. The following were completed body measurements, oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), vitamin D, and other biochemistry measurements. Participants also completed a lifestyle questionnaire.

Of the 74 women who participated, 15 (20%) had AGT. Predictive factors for AGT development were as follows fasting glucose levels (p = 0.004), HbA1c (p = 0.008) at GDM diagnosis, and early pregnancy BMI (p = 0.001). Thirty-three (45%) women had not attended their postnatal screening. The odds ratio of the association between breastfeeding and AGT development was 0.16 (95% CI 0.05 to 0.53).

The proportion of women who develop AGT after a diagnosis of GDM remains high. The factors associated with progression to AGT are available at GDM diagnosis. Preventing AGT in this group is possible by supporting breastfeeding. Attendance at post-natal screening should also be encouraged.

The proportion of women who develop AGT after a diagnosis of GDM remains high. The factors associated with progression to AGT are available at GDM diagnosis. Preventing AGT in this group is possible by supporting breastfeeding. Attendance at post-natal screening should also be encouraged.Previous research yielded conflicting results on the association between cigarette smoking and risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Since the prevalence of smoking is high globally, the study of its impact on COVID-19 pandemic may have considerable implications for public health. This study is the first to investigate the association between the SARS-CoV-2 antibody sero-positivity and biochemically verified smoking status, to refine current estimates on this association. SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG and serum cotinine levels (a well-known marker of tobacco exposure) were assessed in a large sero-epidemiological survey conducted in the town of Troina (Sicily, Italy). A propensity score matching was carried out to reduce the effect of possible factors on SARS-CoV-2 infection risk among study participants. Of the 1785 subjects included in our study, one-third was classified as current smokers, based on serum cotinine levels. The overall proportion of subjects with positive serology for SARS-CoV-2 IgG was 5.4%. The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibody positivity and previous COVID-19 diagnosis were reduced in smokers. This reduced prevalence persisted after adjusting for possible confounders (such as sex, age, previous infection, chronic conditions, and risk group) at regression analyses, and the point estimates based on the PS-matched models resulted consistent with those for the unmatched population. This study found a lower proportion of positive SARS-CoV-2 serology among current smokers, using direct laboratory measures of tobacco exposure and thus avoiding possible bias associated with self-reported smoking status. Results may also serve as a reference for future clinical research on potential pharmaceutical role of nicotine or nicotinic-cholinergic agonists against COVID-19.

The use of motion sensors is emerging as a means for measuring surgical performance. Motion sensors are typically used for calculating performance metrics and assessing skill. The aim of this study was to identify surgical gestures and tools used during an open surgery suturing simulation based on motion sensor data.

Twenty-five participants performed a suturing task on a variable tissue simulator. Electromagnetic motion sensors were used to measure their performance. The current study compares GRU and LSTM networks, which are known to perform well on other kinematic datasets, as well as MS-TCN++, which was developed for video data and was adapted in this work for motion sensors data. Finally, we extended all architectures for multi-tasking.

In the gesture recognition task the MS-TCN++ has the highest performance with accuracy of [Formula see text] and F1-Macro of [Formula see text], edit distance of [Formula see text] and F1@10 of [Formula see text] In the tool usage recognition task for the right handusing motion sensor data, we automatically identified the surgical gestures and the tools used during an open surgery suturing simulation. Our methods may be used for computing more detailed performance metrics and assisting in automatic workflow analysis. MS-TCN++ performed better in gesture recognition as well as right-hand tool recognition, while the multi-task GRU provided better results in the left-hand case. It should be noted that our multi-task GRU network is significantly smaller and has achieved competitive results in the rest of the tasks as well.

Alzheimer's is the most common irreversible neurodegenerative disease. Its symptoms range from memory impairments to degradation of multiple cognitive abilities and ultimately death. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is the earliest detectable stage that happens between normal aging and early dementia, and even though MCI subjects have a chance of changing back to cognitively normal or even staying the same, there is a risk that their condition progresses to Alzheimer's disease (AD) annually. Therefore predicting AD among MCI subjects is pivotal for starting treatments at an opportune time in case of progression, and if staying stable is the case, the need for consistent medical observations would eliminate. Thus, we aim to diagnose possible conversion from MCI to AD by exploiting a class of deep learning (DL) methods called convolutional neural network (CNN).

We proposed a three-dimensional CNN (3D-CNN) to combine and analyze resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), clinical assessmen information with imaging according to the proposed method.Harm is a concept that permeates behavioral and public health discourses on addiction. Examining addiction recovery services in settings beyond the OECD led me to the question What does harm mean in an un-urban, un-Western, and un-democratic space? While some emphasize the human rights potential of reducing harm, others speak to the violence of cure. My ethnographic research in a Therapeutic Community (TC) for drug treatment in Southwest China pushed me to consider how the potential for reducing the harms of illegal substance use balance with the complex psychological demands of cure. The alliance linking Sunlight Therapeutic Community with the provincial drug abuse institute and a foreign NGO was fragile. At the TC, they had difficulty weaving the Western psychological construct of the singular self through the Chinese scaffolding of institutional and cultural practices around the group. In thinking with the concepts of harm and reducing harm, I move across time and space to consider how current tensions link to and reflect 1) the historical harms of opium imperialism; 2) reducing harm in translation; and, 3) reducing harm in the recent psycho-boom.

The objective of this study is to document the prevalence of traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine (TCAM) use by adult cancer patients at a national teaching hospital in Malawi. We aim to document the products/therapies used, the reason for use, as well as patient-reported satisfaction with TCAM practitioners and modalities.

We conducted investigator-administered interviews with adult cancer patients presenting to the Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) Cancer Clinic in Lilongwe, Malawi between January and July 2018. The KCH is a national teaching hospital in the capital of Lilongwe, which serves patients with cancer from the northern half of Malawi. Descriptive statistics were used to describe TCAM use and logistic regression was applied to identify predictors of TCAM.

A total of 263 participants completed the survey, of which 70% (n = 183) were female and average age was 45 (SD 14) years old. The prevalence of overall TCAM use was 84% (n = 222), and 60% (n = 157) of participants reported combatients. Additional studies are needed to identify risks and benefits of TCAM use to assist with policy and public health, patient safety, and holistically address the global burden of cancer.Efforts on selective neural stimulation have concentrated on segregating axons based on their size and geometry. Nonetheless, axons of the white matter or peripheral nerves may also differ in their electrophysiological properties. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the possibility of selective activation of axons by leveraging an assumed level of diversity in passive (Cm & Gleak) and active membrane properties (Ktemp & Gnamax). First, the stimulus waveforms with hyperpolarizing (HPP) and depolarizing pre-pulsing (DPP) were tested on selectivity in a local membrane model. The default value of membrane capacitance (Cm) was found to play a critical role in sensitivity of the chronaxie time (Chr) and rheobase (Rhe) to variations of all the four membrane parameters. Decreasing the default value of Cm, and thus the passive time constant of the membrane, amplified the sensitivity to the active parameters, Ktemp and GNamax, on Chr. The HPP waveform could selectively activate neurons even if they were diversified by membrane leakage (Gleak) only, and produced higher selectivity than DPP when parameters are varied in pairs. Selectivity measures were larger when the passive parameters (Cm & Gleak) were varied together, compared to the active parameters. Second, this novel mechanism of selectivity was investigated with non-rectangular waveforms for the stimulating phase (and HPP) in the same local membrane model. Simulation results suggest that Kt2 is the most selective waveform followed by Linear and Gaussian waveforms. Traditional rectangular pulse was among the least selective of all. Finally, a compartmental axon model confirmed the main findings of the local model that Kt2 is the most selective, but rank ordered the other waveforms differently. These results suggest a potentially novel mechanism of stimulation selectivity, leveraging electrophysiological variations in membrane properties, that can lead to various neural prosthetic applications.