Category: Nevin Manimala

Anthropol Anz. 2023 Oct 18. doi: 10.1127/anthranz/2023/1741. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Regional variation in the body size of Indian men 18-84 years of age (birth years 1891-1957) was considered. Heights, weights, and BMIs of Indian males from four regions of the country – North, East-Northeast, Central, and West were compared. Heights of men 35+ years of age were adjusted for estimated height loss with age; the estimate was added to observed height to provide an estimate of maximum height. Linear regressions of measured height and estimated maximum height on year of birth were used to evaluate secular change by region. Differences in measured and estimated maximum heights and weight among regions were significant in all age groups, while differences in the BMI were significant in all age groups except 55+ years. Men from the North region were tallest and those from the East-Northeast region were shortest, while body weight and the BMI varied among regions. Regression analyses of year of birth on measured and estimated maximum heights indicated small differences in estimates of secular change among regions but suggested a decline in estimated maximum heights with age among men in the four regions born in 1891 through the 1930s, and small but variable estimates of secular change in heights among men born in the 1930s through 1957. The variation likely reflected socio-economic disparities and ecological differences among regions, and by inference nutritional status though data are limited.

PMID:37869889 | DOI:10.1127/anthranz/2023/1741

Dentomaxillofac Radiol. 2023 Oct 23:20230065. doi: 10.1259/dmfr.20230065. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the reliability and reproducibility of an artificial intelligence (AI) software in identifying cephalometric points on lateral cephalometric radiographs considering four settings of brightness and contrast.

METHODS AND MATERIALS: Brightness and contrast of 30 lateral cephalometric radiographs were adjusted into four different settings. Then, the control examiner (ECont), the calibrated examiner (ECal), and the CEFBOT AI software (AIs) each marked 19 cephalometric points on all radiographs. Reliability was assessed with a second analysis of the radiographs 15 days after the first one. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05.

RESULTS: Reliability of landmark identification was excellent for the human examiners and the AIs regardless of the type of brightness and contrast setting (mean intraclass correlation coefficient >0.89). When ECont and ECal were compared for reproducibility, there were more cephalometric points with significant differences on the x-axis of the image with the highest contrast and the lowest brightness, namely N(p = 0.033), S(p = 0.030), Po(p < 0.001), and Pog'(p = 0.012). Between ECont and AIs, there were more cephalometric points with significant differences on the image with the highest contrast and the lowest brightness, namely N(p = 0.034), Or(p = 0.048), Po(p < 0.001), A(p = 0.042), Pog'(p = 0.004), Ll(p = 0.005), Ul(p < 0.001), and Sn(p = 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: While the reliability of the AIs for cephalometric landmark identification was rated as excellent, low brightness and high contrast seemed to affect its reproducibility. The experienced human examiner, on the other hand, did not show such faulty reproducibility; therefore, the AIs used in this study is an excellent auxiliary tool for cephalometric analysis, but still depends on human supervision to be clinically reliable.

PMID:37869886 | DOI:10.1259/dmfr.20230065

Vet Q. 2023 Oct 23:1-17. doi: 10.1080/01652176.2023.2273887. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The lifespan of the European hare (Lepus europaeus P.) is affected by a number of negative factors, including environmental pollutants. In this paper, the individual and joint influence of age and habitat (elevation and distance from the thermal power plant – TPP) on pathomorphological (macroscopic and microscopic) findings of hares shot during three hunting seasons was investigated. Pathomorphological changes were found in 95.12% of hares, most frequently in liver, lungs and kidneys. In hares up to 1 year of age, the changes were predominant in the lungs, and in older hares, in the kidneys. Degenerative changes in kidneys and liver and inflammatory changes in kidneys and lungs were considered important most in discussing the influence of chemical pollution. The proximity of TPP significantly influenced the type of changes found in the liver. A significant joint effect of age and elevation on the type of changes in the lungs of adult hares and on the heart of young hares was found. Elevation and distance from TPP had a significant joint effect on the occurrence of changes in the lungs, intestines, and heart in hares from the field farther from TPP. The obtained results indicate that the hares in our study were highly exposed to chemical pollutants that may affect their immunity, and lifespan.

PMID:37869876 | DOI:10.1080/01652176.2023.2273887

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2023 Oct 20;309:199-203. doi: 10.3233/SHTI230778.

ABSTRACT

Health disparities between urban and rural America have been studied extensively, and findings consistently show many inequities. The objective of this study was to evaluate patient experiences and utilization among patients in North Carolina who use telemedicine. A retrospective cohort study was performed to examine the utilization and satisfaction of patients using a virtual care service at a Southeastern Medical Center in the U.S. Of 1974 telemedicine patients, 1366 (79.3%) were female, 1046(60.7%) were between 35-64 years, 913(53%) had insurance coverage. Statistically significant differences between rural and urban patients in how patients rated both their provider (p<0.01) and overall telemedicine experience (p<0.01). Our findings showed high satisfaction scores among both rural and urban communities in using the telemedicine platform with slightly higher scores among rural patients, which shows the need for on-demand telemedicine to increase health access and patient outcomes among rural communities.

PMID:37869842 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI230778

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2023 Oct 20;309:126-130. doi: 10.3233/SHTI230755.

ABSTRACT

The Data Integration Centers (DICs), all part of the German Medical Informatics Initiative (MII), prepare routine care data captured in university hospitals to enable its reuse in clinical research. Tackling this challenging task requires them to maintain multiple data stores, implement the necessary transformation processes, and provide the required terminology services, all while also addressing the use case specific needs researchers might have. An MII wide application of the standardized profiles defined in the IHE QRPH domain might therefore be able to drastically reduce the overhead at any one DIC. The MII DIC reference model built in 3LGM2, a method to describe complex information system architectures, serves as a starting point to evaluate whether such an application is possible. We first extend the IHE modeling capabilities of 3LGM2 to also support the five profiles from the QRPH domain that our experts evaluated as relevant in the MII DIC context. We then expand the DIC reference model by some IHE QRPH actors and transactions, showing that their application could be beneficial in the MII DIC context, provided they surpass their trial status.

PMID:37869821 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI230755

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2023 Oct 20;309:97-98. doi: 10.3233/SHTI230748.

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we describe Neonatal Resuscitation Training Simulator (NRTS), an Android mobile app designed to support medical experts to input, transmit and record data during a High-Fidelity Simulation course for neonatal resuscitation. This mobile app allows one to automatically send all the recorded data from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of Casale Monferrato Children’s Hospital, (Italy) to a server in the cloud managed by the University of Piemonte Orientale (Italy). The medical instructor can then view statistics on simulation exercises, that may be used during the debriefing phase for the evaluation of multidisciplinary teams involved in the simulation scenarios.

PMID:37869815 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI230748

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2023 Oct 20;309:78-82. doi: 10.3233/SHTI230743.

ABSTRACT

Clinical texts are written with acronyms, abbreviations and medical jargon expressions to save time. This hinders full comprehension not just for medical experts but also laypeople. This paper attempts to disambiguate acronyms with their given context by comparing a web mining approach via the search engine BING and a conversational agent approach using ChatGPT with the aim to see, if these methods can supply a viable resolution for the input acronym. Both approaches are automated via application programming interfaces. Possible term candidates are extracted using natural language processing-oriented functionality. The conversational agent approach surpasses the baseline for web mining without plausibility thresholds in precision, recall and F1-measure, while scoring similarly only in precision for high threshold values.

PMID:37869810 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI230743

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2023 Oct 20;309:38-42. doi: 10.3233/SHTI230735.

ABSTRACT

In multiple publications over 3 decades, most recently in The Book of Why, Judea Pearl has led what he regards as the ‘causal revolution’. His central contention is that, prior to it, no discipline had produced a rigorous ‘scientific’ way of making the causal inferences from observational data necessary for policy and decision making. The concentration on the statistical processing of data, outputting frequencies or probabilities, had proceeded without adequately acknowledging that this statistical processing is operating, not only on a particular set of data, but on a set of causal assumptions about that data, often unarticulated and unanalysed. He argues that the arrival of the directed acyclic graph (DAG), a ‘language of causation’ has enabled this fundamental weakness to be remedied. We outline the DAG approach to the extent necessary to make the key point, captured in this paper’s title regarding DAG’s potential contribution to improved decision or policy making.

PMID:37869802 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI230735

Low Urin Tract Symptoms. 2023 Oct 22. doi: 10.1111/luts.12506. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) causes voiding lower urinary tract symptoms (vLUTS). In the present study, we investigated the association between vLUTS and pelvic organ mobility (POM), including relevant supportive structures, on dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI).

METHODS: We included 118 patients who had POP of stage II or less before straining and stage III or more when straining during dMRI. The presence of vLUTS and overactive bladder (OAB) was determined by a voiding subscore of the International Prostate Symptom Score (vIPSS) ≥5 and the OAB symptom score, respectively. POM was measured by dMRI before and during straining, and patients with and without vLUTS as well as patients with and without vLUTS and/or OAB were compared. p < .05 was considered to be statistically significant.

RESULTS: According to vIPSS, 42 patients (35.6%) had vLUTS. On dMRI, patients with vLUTS showed a significantly more ventral position and/or movement of the bladder and cervix. Moreover, patients with vLUTS and OAB had significantly more ventral movement of the uterine cervix and a larger strain on imaginary uterosacral and cardinal ligaments than those without these symptoms. In addition, patients with vLUTS and OAB had significantly higher vIPSS than those with vLUTS alone.

CONCLUSIONS: vLUTS may be associated with the proximity of the bladder and cervix to the pubic bone and consequent compression of the urethra by the prolapsed organs. vLUTS with OAB might indicate more advanced lower urinary tract dysfunction than vLUTS alone.

PMID:37866821 | DOI:10.1111/luts.12506

World Neurosurg. 2023 Oct 20:S1878-8750(23)01480-8. doi: 10.1016/j.wneu.2023.10.076. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: To compare the efficacy of neuroendoscopic hematoma evacuation (NHE) and burr hole craniotomy (BHC) for treating Septated chronic subdural hematoma (sCSDH) and analyze the technical advantages of NHE in sCSDH treatment by data anylise.

METHODS: This study recruited 77 patients with sCSDH According to the type of operation, the patients were divided into NHE (n = 45) or BHC (n = 32) groups. Clinical data were retrospectively analyzed to evaluate and compare the efficacy of NHE and BHC for treating sCSDH.

RESULTS: NHE demonstrated higher complete hematoma clearance and postoperative midline recovery rates and shorter subdural drainage and postoperative bed rest durations compared with BHC (P < 0.05). The average NHE time (72.27 ± 18.27 min) was longer than that of BHC (54.91 ± 16.04 min) (P < 0.05). The average follow-up period was 30.9 (range, 7-51) months. The results revealed that 1 and 12 cases recurred in the NHE (2.2%) and BHC (18.8%) groups, respectively (P < 0.05). Additionally, a statistically significant difference in the Modified Rankin Scale scores of the two groups was observed 6 months after the operation (P < 0.05). During the follow-up period, neither group demonstrated any obvious operative complications.

CONCLUSION: NHE is more effective than BHC for treating sCSDH and is worth popularizing on a large scale; however, ways to better deal with the outer membrane of hematoma warrant further consideration.

PMID:37866781 | DOI:10.1016/j.wneu.2023.10.076