Nevin Manimala

BMC Surg. 2022 Sep 19;22(1):344. doi: 10.1186/s12893-022-01792-9.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Mini laparotomy cholecystectomy (MLC) is an alternative surgical procedure in conditions where laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) is not feasible. MLC is a simpler and easier technique compared to LC. MLC involves smaller skin incision, low morbidity rate, and early return to oral diet. MLC has the potential to be the preferred surgical technique in developing countries due to its low cost and availability.

METHOD: A cohort retrospective study was performed on 44 patients who underwent mini laparotomy cholecystectomy due to ineligibility for LC. Patients were documented for successful mini laparotomy or conversion to laparotomy cholecystectomy. There are pre-operative aspects recorded and analyzed to formulate predictor factors for conversion surgery, as well as intra-operative and post-operative aspects. Patients also filled evaluation questionnaire based on Likert Scale about their satisfaction towards result of MLC.

RESULT: MLC is performed in 31 (70.5%) patients while 13 (29.5%) patients underwent conversion to open cholecystectomy. There were no complications nor mortalities observed during and after the surgery. Greater BMI, higher leucocyte count, higher bilirubin level, increasing severity of adhesion, and chronic cholecystitis were found to be statistically significant (p < 0.05) in the conversion surgery group. MLC also resulted in shorter post-operative hospitalization compared to conversion surgery. Patients showed great satisfaction towards the cosmetic aspect and recovery period after MLC procedure.

CONCLUSION: MLC is an effective surgery procedure for cholelithiasis and can be safely performed in patients with complication such as cholecystitis and gallbladder adhesion although these conditions increase the risk of conversion surgery.

PMID:36123672 | DOI:10.1186/s12893-022-01792-9

BMC Pediatr. 2022 Sep 19;22(1):553. doi: 10.1186/s12887-022-03613-7.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Bacterial infection of adenoid is currently considered to be an important cause of adenoid hypertrophy (AH) in children. Although several bacteriology studies on adenoid diseases have been reported, the aerobic bacterial study regarding risk factors and antibiotic sensitivity of AH in Chinese children is lacking. This study aims to investigate the risk factors for aerobic bacterial colonization of AH in Chinese children and to elucidate aerobic bacterial profiles and antibiotic sensitivity.

METHODS: Samples were collected from the adenoid core and surface tissue of 466 children undergoing adenoidectomy. Aerobic cultures and antibiotic sensitivity were observed. The risk factors for bacterial colonization of adenoid were analyzed statistically.

RESULTS: A total of 143 children could be detected opportunistic pathogens in adenoid surface and/or core tissue, with a carriage rate of 30.7%. The presence of chronic rhinosinusitis, tonsillar hypertrophy and adenoidal size were the risk factors for aerobic bacterial colonization of adenoid in univariate analysis. Multivariate analysis showed that chronic rhinosinusitis and tonsil hypertrophy were significant variables associated with the aerobic bacterial colonization. The most frequently isolated aerobic bacteria were Haemophilus influenzae, followed by Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae. There was no statistically significant difference in bacterial species between the adenoid surface and core. The above common bacteria were more sensitive to cephalosporins and quinolones antibiotics, and significantly resistant to penicillin antibiotics and non-β-lactamase inhibitors.

CONCLUSION: Our results provide recent aerobic bacterial profiles for AH among Chinese children and confirm the risk factors and antibiotic sensitivity. This study contributes to understanding the role of different risk factors in the development of AH and will be helpful to the treatment of AH among Chinese children.

PMID:36123658 | DOI:10.1186/s12887-022-03613-7

BMC Oral Health. 2022 Sep 19;22(1):410. doi: 10.1186/s12903-022-02446-1.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Stroke patients have poor oral hygiene, experience oral dysfunction due to disease factors, and have impaired oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL). This study aimed to determine the oral health knowledge, attitudes, and practices of stroke inpatients, assess the OHRQoL of these patients, and identify their correlates.

METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 281 stroke inpatients aged between 22 and 88 years (57.94 ± 10.94) were conveniently selected from three hospitals in Guangzhou, China. OHRQoL was measured among these stroke patients using a Chinese version of the Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14). SPSS 26.0 was used for statistical analysis. Mean scores, standard deviations, and frequency distributions were obtained. The Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal‒Wallis H test, Spearman’s correlation, and multiple linear regression were used in the analysis.

RESULTS: The mean score of the patients’ OHRQoL was 8.37 ± 6.67, with the highest score in the pain or discomfort of the mouth dimension (3.11 ± 2.13) and pain being the most common negative effect (13.5%). In multiple linear regression analysis, significant differences were found between patients only in age (P = 0.008), toothache (P < 0.001), self-rated oral health (P < 0.001), time since last dentist visit (P = 0.037) and reason for not having visited a dentist in the past year (P < 0.001).

CONCLUSION: The OHRQoL of patients hospitalised with stroke was moderate, and oral conditions still need to be improved. Increasing age, toothache, a longer time since the last dental visit and the reason for not visiting a dentist in the past year had a negative effect on OHRQoL, and better self-rated oral health had a positive effect. Therefore, in clinical work, greater attention should be given to elderly stroke patients, patients with poor oral status and poor oral health behaviours, timely assessment of patients’ swallowing function, nutritional function, and self-care ability, and early and targeted oral health interventions and guidance.

PMID:36123656 | DOI:10.1186/s12903-022-02446-1

BMC Med Educ. 2022 Sep 19;22(1):685. doi: 10.1186/s12909-022-03747-3.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: During simulation training, the confederate is a member of the pedagogical team. Its role is to facilitate the interaction between participants and the environment, and is thought to increase realism and immersion. Its influence on participants’ performance in full-scale simulation remains however unknown. The purpose of this study was to observe the effect of the presence of confederates on the participants’ performance during full-scale simulation of crisis medical situations.

METHODS: This was a prospective, randomized study comparing 2 parallel groups. Participants were emergency medicine residents engaging in a simulation session, with or without confederates. Participants were then evaluated on their Crisis Resource Management performance (CRM). The overall performance score on the Ottawa Global Rating Scale was assessed as primary outcome and the 5 non-technical CRM skills as secondary outcomes.

RESULTS: A total of 63 simulation sessions, including 63 residents, were included for statistical analysis (n = 32 for Control group and 31 for Confederate group). The mean Overall Performance score was 3.9 ± 0.8 in the Control group and 4.0 ± 1.1 in the Confederate group, 95% confidence interval of the difference [-0.6; 0.4], p = 0.60. No significant differences between the two groups were observed on each CRM items (leadership, situational awareness, communication, problem solving, resource utilization) CONCLUSION: In this randomized and controlled study, the presence of confederates during full-scale simulated practice of crisis medical situations does not seem to influence the CRM skills performance of Emergency medicine residents.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study does not need to be registered on Clintrial as it does not report a health care intervention on human participants.

PMID:36123654 | DOI:10.1186/s12909-022-03747-3

BMC Bioinformatics. 2022 Sep 19;23(1):382. doi: 10.1186/s12859-022-04913-6.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is currently one of the cancers with a higher mortality rate in the world. The biological research on anti-breast cancer drugs focuses on the activity of estrogen receptors alpha (ER[Formula: see text]), the pharmacokinetic properties and the safety of the compounds, which, however, is an expensive and time-consuming process. Developments of deep learning bring potential to efficiently facilitate the candidate drug selection against breast cancer.

METHODS: In this paper, we propose an Anti-Breast Cancer Drug selection method utilizing Gated Graph Neural Networks (ABCD-GGNN) to topologically enhance the molecular representation of candidate drugs. By constructing atom-level graphs through atomic descriptors for each distinct compound, ABCD-GGNN can topologically learn both the implicit structure and substructure characteristics of a candidate drug and then integrate the representation with explicit discrete molecular descriptors to generate a molecule-level representation. As a result, the representation of ABCD-GGNN can inductively predict the ER[Formula: see text], the pharmacokinetic properties and the safety of each candidate drug. Finally, we design a ranking operator whose inputs are the predicted properties so as to statistically select the appropriate drugs against breast cancer.

RESULTS: Extensive experiments conducted on our collected anti-breast cancer candidate drug dataset demonstrate that our proposed method outperform all the other representative methods in the tasks of predicting ER[Formula: see text], and the pharmacokinetic properties and safety of the compounds. Extended result analysis demonstrates the efficiency and biological rationality of the operator we design to calculate the candidate drug ranking from the predicted properties.

CONCLUSION: In this paper, we propose the ABCD-GGNN representation method to efficiently integrate the topological structure and substructure features of the molecules with the discrete molecular descriptors. With a ranking operator applied, the predicted properties efficiently facilitate the candidate drug selection against breast cancer.

PMID:36123643 | DOI:10.1186/s12859-022-04913-6

BMC Med Res Methodol. 2022 Sep 19;22(1):242. doi: 10.1186/s12874-022-01723-5.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: A sample size justification is required for all studies and should give the minimum number of subjects to be recruited for the study to achieve its primary objective. The aim of this review is to describe sample sizes from agreement studies with continuous or categorical endpoints and different methods of assessing agreement, and to determine whether sample size justification was provided.

METHODS: Data were gathered from the PubMed repository with a time interval of 28^th September 2018 to 28^th September 2020. The search returned 5257 studies of which 82 studies were eligible for final assessment after duplicates and ineligible studies were excluded.

RESULTS: We observed a wide range of sample sizes. Forty-six studies (56%) used a continuous outcome measure, 28 (34%) used categorical and eight (10%) used both. Median sample sizes were 50 (IQR 25 to 100) for continuous endpoints and 119 (IQR 50 to 271) for categorical endpoints. Bland-Altman limits of agreement (median sample size 65; IQR 35 to 124) were the most common method of statistical analysis for continuous variables and Kappa coefficients for categorical variables (median sample size 71; IQR 50 to 233). Of the 82 studies assessed, only 27 (33%) gave justification for their sample size.

CONCLUSIONS: Despite the importance of a sample size justification, we found that two-thirds of agreement studies did not provide one. We recommend that all agreement studies provide rationale for their sample size even if they do not include a formal sample size calculation.

PMID:36123642 | DOI:10.1186/s12874-022-01723-5

Rev Esc Enferm USP. 2022 Sep 19;56:e20220006. doi: 10.1590/1980-220X-REEUSP-2022-0006en. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate mental health promotion software for students in the early years of undergraduate nursing course.

METHOD: Descriptive study developed with 41 undergraduates from a private higher education institution in an inland city of the state of São Paulo, approved by the Research Ethics Committee. Data collection was carried out remotely from April to October 2021, using a sociodemographic characterization questionnaire and student assessment of the software. The results were analyzed by descriptive statistics.

RESULTS: Most respondents rated the tool and the clarity of its content as excellent. The modules considered most relevant were those related to solving problems with future implications. The students considered the advice very applicable to everyday life and a good correspondence between problem situations and real life.

CONCLUSION: This type of intervention is configured as one more option in the list of strategies to promote nursing students’ mental health, although it does not replace face-to-face care.

PMID:36122361 | DOI:10.1590/1980-220X-REEUSP-2022-0006en

J Cogn Neurosci. 2022 Sep 14:1-30. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_01916. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Previous research shows that, within human occipito-temporal cortex (OTC), we can use a general linear mapping function to link visual object responses across nonidentity feature changes, including Euclidean features (e.g., position and size) and non-Euclidean features (e.g., image statistics and spatial frequency). Although the learned mapping is capable of predicting responses of objects not included in training, these predictions are better for categories included than those not included in training. These findings demonstrate a near-orthogonal representation of object identity and nonidentity features throughout human OTC. Here, we extended these findings to examine the mapping across both Euclidean and non-Euclidean feature changes in human posterior parietal cortex (PPC), including functionally defined regions in inferior and superior intraparietal sulcus. We additionally examined responses in five convolutional neural networks (CNNs) pretrained with object classification, as CNNs are considered as the current best model of the primate ventral visual system. We separately compared results from PPC and CNNs with those of OTC. We found that a linear mapping function could successfully link object responses in different states of nonidentity transformations in human PPC and CNNs for both Euclidean and non-Euclidean features. Overall, we found that object identity and nonidentity features are represented in a near-orthogonal, rather than complete-orthogonal, manner in PPC and CNNs, just like they do in OTC. Meanwhile, some differences existed among OTC, PPC, and CNNs. These results demonstrate the similarities and differences in how visual object information across an identity-preserving image transformation may be represented in OTC, PPC, and CNNs.

PMID:36122358 | DOI:10.1162/jocn_a_01916

Pain Physician. 2022 Sep;25(6):E851-E856.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Chronic foot pain (CFP) is a widespread condition worldwide; however, few studies that relate CFP and foot health-related quality of life have been reported.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to describe the impact of foot health and health in general in a sample of adult people with CFP compared with a control group.

STUDY DESIGN: This study was designed as a retrospective case-control study.

SETTING: Podiatric section of a care center.

METHODS: Two hundred adults were included in the study. Patients were divided into CFP patient (n = 100) and control groups (n = 100). All of them regularly attended a private podiatric clinic to take care of their foot health. Self-reported data and medical histories for people with and without CFP were evaluated. All findings were compared with quality of life (QoL) scores based on the Foot Health Status Questionnaire, Spanish version.

RESULTS: Adults with CFP (compared to the control group) showed reductions in QoL linked to overall health and foot health in particular and were statistically significant with respect to several domains: (1) foot pain, (2) foot function, (3) general health, and (4) physical activity. These differ-ences were evaluated with a t-test for independent samples, and statistical significance was consid-ered a P value of P < 0.05.

LIMITATIONS: The study was not a randomized controlled trial. Although primary outcome data were self-reported, the assessor was not blinded.

CONCLUSIONS: CFP patients, regardless of gender, recorded a negative influence on QoL-related foot health that seems to be linked with the presence of this chronic condition.

PMID:36122268