Nevin Manimala

Anesth Analg. 2021 Sep 13. doi: 10.1213/ANE.0000000000005745. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

At the outbreak of World War II (WWII), anesthesiology was struggling to establish itself as a medical specialty. The battlefield abruptly exposed this young specialty to the formidable challenge of mass casualties, with an urgent need to provide proper fluid resuscitation, airway management, mechanical ventilation, and analgesia to thousands. But while Europe was suffering under the Nazi boot, anesthesia was preparing to rise to the challenge posed by the impending war. While war brings death and destruction, it also opens the way to medical advances. The aim of this study is to measure the evolution of anesthesia owing to WWII. We conducted a retrospective observational bibliometric study involving a quantitative and statistical analysis of publications. The following 7 journals were selected to cover European and North American anesthesia-related publications: Anesthesia & Analgesia, the British Journal of Anaesthesia, Anesthesiology, Schmerz-Narkose-Anaesthesie, Surgery, La Presse Médicale, and The Military Surgeon (later Military Medicine). Attention was focused on journal volumes published between 1920 and 1965. After reviewing the literature, we selected 12 keywords representing important advances in anesthesiology since 1920: “anesthesia,” “balanced anesthesia,” “barbiturates,” “d-tubocurarine,” “endotracheal intubation,” “ether,” “lidocaine,” “morphine,” “spinal anesthesia,” “thiopental,” “transfusion,” and “trichloroethylene.” Titles of original articles from all selected journals editions between 1920 and 1965 were screened for the occurrence of 1 of the 12 keywords. A total of 26,132 original article titles were screened for the occurrence of the keywords. A total of 1815 keywords were found. Whereas Anesthesia & Analgesia had the highest keyword occurrence (493 citations), Schmerz-Narkose-Anaesthesie had the lowest (38 citations). The number of publications of the 12 keywords was significantly higher in the postwar than in the prewar period (65% and 35%, respectively; P < .001). Not surprisingly, the anesthesiology journals have a higher occurrence of keywords than those journals covering other specialties. The overall occurrence of keywords also showed peaks during other major conflicts, namely the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the Korean War (1950-1953), and the Vietnam War (1955-1975). For the first time, this study demonstrates statistically the impact of WWII on the progress of anesthesiology. It also offers an objective record of the chronology of the major advances in anesthesiology before and after the conflict. While the war arguably helped to enhance anesthesiology as a specialty, in return anesthesiology helped to heal the wounds of war.

PMID:34724677 | DOI:10.1213/ANE.0000000000005745

Eur Surg Res. 2021 Nov 1. doi: 10.1159/000520386. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: The disruption to surgical training and medical education caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for realistic, reliable, and engaging educational opportunities available outside of the operating theatre and accessible for trainees of all levels. This paper presents the design and development of a virtual reality curriculum which simulates the surgical mentorship experience outside of the operating theatre, with a focus on surgical anatomy and surgical decision making.

METHOD: This was a multi-institutional study between London’s King’s College and Imperial College. The index procedure selected for the module was robotic radical prostatectomy. For each stage of the surgical procedure, subject-matter experts (N=3) at King’s College London, identified: (1) the critical surgical-decision making points, (2) critical anatomical landmarks and (3) tips and techniques for overcoming intraoperative challenges. Content validity was determined by an independent panel of subject-matter experts (N=8) at Imperial College, London using Fleiss’ Kappa statistic. The experts’ teaching points were combined with operative footage and illustrative animations and projected onto a virtual reality headset. The module was piloted to Surgical Science students (N=15). Quantitative analysis compared participants’ confidence regarding their anatomical knowledge before and after taking the module. Qualitative data was gathered from students regarding their views on using the virtual reality model.

RESULTS: Multi-rater agreement between experts was above the 70.0% threshold for all steps of the procedure. 73% of pilot study participants ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that they achieved a better understanding of surgical anatomy and the rationale behind each procedural step. This was reflected in an increase in the median knowledge score after trialing the curriculum (p<0.001). 100% of subject-matter experts and 93.3% of participants ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that virtual mentorship would be useful for future surgical training.

CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that virtual surgical mentorship could be a feasible and cost-effective alternative to traditional training methods with the potential to improve technical skills, such as operative proficiency and non-technical skills such as decision-making and situational judgement. .

PMID:34724676 | DOI:10.1159/000520386

Obes Facts. 2021 Nov 1:1-8. doi: 10.1159/000519946. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has caused gym closures and adjustments to ongoing weight loss programs were needed in order to keep the programs running. Little is known whether adjustments affected the success of weight reduction. Weight reduction of at least 5% is related to improved fertility and better pregnancy outcomes in obese women. This study compared success of the weight loss program in infertile polycystic ovary syndrome women with obesity who attended the program before and during lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we checked whether there were any differences in spontaneous pregnancy rates between both groups at the end of the program.

METHODS: Altogether, 27 women were prospectively included to the weight loss program. Twelve women attended the 8 – week program before COVID-19 pandemic. Fifteen women began the program before the lockdown and ended it during lockdown. Due to lockdown, the program was prolonged for 4 weeks and taken online.

RESULTS: On average, prior to lockdown women achieved a BMI reduction of 6.8% whereas women that attended the program during the lockdown reduced their BMI for 3.7%. This difference was not statistically significant. No significant differences were seen in other measured anthropometric and endocrine parameters between both groups. Furthermore, there were no differences in spontaneous pregnancy rates between both groups. In women who reduced their BMI for 5% or more, spontaneous pregnancy rate was 29.4%.

DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS: Although statistical significance has not been reached in the present study, we have shown that lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic has led to almost half lower BMI reduction despite adaptations and longer duration of the weight loss program. On average, BMI in the group of women that attended the program during lockdown was 3.7% lower after the end of the weight loss program. This means they did not reach the wanted 5% reduction which is known to improve fertility. We have also shown that weight reduction is the correct approach for treating infertile women with obesity, as almost 30% of those who reduced their body weight by 5% or more conceived spontaneously.

PMID:34724671 | DOI:10.1159/000519946

Neurosurg Focus. 2021 Nov;51(5):E10. doi: 10.3171/2021.8.FOCUS20892.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Microsurgery plays an essential role in managing unruptured intracranial aneurysms (UIAs). The Clavien-Dindo classification is a therapy-oriented grading system that rates any deviation from the normal postoperative course in five grades. In this study, the authors aimed to test the applicability of the Clavien-Dindo grade (CDG) in patients who underwent microsurgical treatment of UIAs.

METHODS: The records of patients who underwent microsurgery for UIAs (January 2013-November 2018) were retrieved from a prospective database. Complications at discharge and at short-term follow-up (3 months) were rated according to the Clavien-Dindo system. Patient outcomes were graded using the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) and the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS). A descriptive statistic was used for data analysis.

RESULTS: Overall, 156 patients underwent 157 surgeries for 201 UIAs (size range 4-42 mm). Thirty-nine patients (25%) had complex UIAs. An adverse event (CDG ≥ I) occurred in 21 patients (13.5%) by the time of discharge. Among these, 10 patients (6.4%) presented with a new neurological deficit. Significant correlations existed between a CDG ≥ I and an increase in mRS and NIHSS scores (p < 0.001). Patients treated for complex aneurysms had a significantly higher risk of developing new neurological deficits (20.5% vs 1.7%, p = 0.007). At the 3-month follow-up, a CDG ≥ I was registered in 16 patients (10.3%); none presented with a new neurological deficit. A CDG ≥ I was associated with a longer hospital length of stay (LOS) (no complication vs CDG ≥ I, 6.2 ± 3.5 days vs 9.3 ± 7.7 days, p = 0.02).

CONCLUSIONS: The CDG was applicable to patients who received microsurgery of UIAs. A significant correlation existed between CDG and outcome scales, as well as LOS. The aneurysm complexity was significantly associated with a higher risk for new neurological deficit.

PMID:34724644 | DOI:10.3171/2021.8.FOCUS20892

Neurosurg Focus. 2021 Nov;51(5):E8. doi: 10.3171/2021.8.FOCUS21386.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: What is considered “abnormal” in clinical testing is typically defined by simple thresholds derived from normative data. For instance, when testing using the five-repetition sit-to-stand (5R-STS) test, the upper limit of normal (ULN) from a population of spine-healthy volunteers (10.5 seconds) is used to identify objective functional impairment (OFI), but this fails to consider different properties of individuals (e.g., taller and shorter, older and younger). Therefore, the authors developed a personalized testing strategy to quantify patient-specific OFI using machine learning.

METHODS: Patients with disc herniation, spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis, or discogenic chronic low-back pain and a population of spine-healthy volunteers, from two prospective studies, were included. A machine learning model was trained on normative data to predict personalized “expected” test times and their confidence intervals and ULNs (99th percentiles) based on simple demographics. OFI was defined as a test time greater than the personalized ULN. OFI was categorized into types 1 to 3 based on a clustering algorithm. A web app was developed to deploy the model clinically.

RESULTS: Overall, 288 patients and 129 spine-healthy individuals were included. The model predicted “expected” test times with a mean absolute error of 1.18 (95% CI 1.13-1.21) seconds and R2 of 0.37 (95% CI 0.34-0.41). Based on the implemented personalized testing strategy, 191 patients (66.3%) exhibited OFI. Type 1, 2, and 3 impairments were seen in 64 (33.5%), 91 (47.6%), and 36 (18.8%) patients, respectively. Increasing detected levels of OFI were associated with statistically significant increases in subjective functional impairment, extreme anxiety and depression symptoms, being bedridden, extreme pain or discomfort, inability to carry out activities of daily living, and a limited ability to work.

CONCLUSIONS: In the era of “precision medicine,” simple population-based thresholds may eventually not be adequate to monitor quality and safety in neurosurgery. Individualized assessment integrating machine learning techniques provides more detailed and objective clinical assessment. The personalized testing strategy demonstrated concurrent validity with quality-of-life measures, and the freely accessible web app (https://neurosurgery.shinyapps.io/5RSTS/) enabled clinical application.

PMID:34724641 | DOI:10.3171/2021.8.FOCUS21386

Neurosurg Focus. 2021 Nov;51(5):E4. doi: 10.3171/2021.8.FOCUS21378.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Timely ventriculostomy placement is critical in the management of neurosurgical emergencies. Prompt external ventricular drain (EVD) placement has been shown to improve long-term patient outcomes and decrease the length of ICU and hospital stays. Successful and efficient EVD placement requires seamless coordination among multiple healthcare teams. In this study, the authors sought to identify factors favoring delayed ventriculostomy via a quality improvement initiative and to implement changes to expedite EVD placement.

METHODS: Through process mapping, root cause analysis, and interviews with staff, the authors identified the lack of a standardized mechanism for alerting necessary healthcare teams as a major contributor to delays in EVD placement. In December 2019, an EVD alert system was developed to automatically initiate an EVD placement protocol and to alert the neurosurgery department, pharmacy, core laboratory, and nursing staff to prepare for EVD placement. The time to EVD placement was tracked prospectively using time stamps in the electronic medical record.

RESULTS: A total of 20 patients who underwent EVD placement between December 2019 and April 2021, during the EVD alert protocol initiation, and 18 preprotocol control patients (January 2018 to December 2019) met study inclusion criteria and were included in the analysis. The mean time to EVD placement in the control group was 71.88 minutes compared with 50.3 minutes in the EVD alert group (two-tailed t-test, p = 0.025). The median time to EVD placement was 64 minutes in the control group compared with 52 minutes in the EVD alert group (rank-sum test, p = 0.0184). All patients from each cohort exhibited behavior typical of stable processes, with no violation of Shewhart rules and no special cause variations on statistical process control charts.

CONCLUSIONS: A quality improvement framework helped identify sources of delays to EVD placement in the emergency department. An automated EVD alert system was a simple intervention that significantly reduced the time to EVD placement in the emergency department and can be easily implemented at other institutions to improve patient care.

PMID:34724637 | DOI:10.3171/2021.8.FOCUS21378

Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2021 Nov 1:tpmd210580. doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.21-0580. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

In 2016, diarrheal disease was the eighth leading cause of mortality globally accounting for over 1.6 million deaths with the majority of deaths in adults and children over 5 years. This study aims to investigate the clinical, sociodemographic, and environmental risk factors associated with common bacterial acute diarrhea among adults and children over 5. Data were collected from March 2019 to March 2020 in patients over 5 years presenting with acute gastroenteritis at icddr,b. Stool samples were collected from each patient for culture and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing. Bivariate associations between independent variables and stool-testing indicating bacterial etiology were calculated. This analysis included 2,133 diarrheal patients of whom a bacterial enteropathogen was identified in 1,537 (72%). Detection of bacteria was associated with: younger age (OR 0.92; 95% CI: 0.88-0.96), lower mean arterial pressure (OR 0.84; 95% CI: 0.79-0.89), heart rate (OR 1.06; 95% CI: 1.01-1.10), percentage dehydration (OR 1.33; 95% CI: 1.13-1.55), respiration rate (OR 1.23; 95% CI: 1.04-1.46), lower mid-upper arm circumference (OR 0.97; 95% CI: 0.94-0.99), confused/lethargic mental status (OR 1.85; 95% CI: 1.11-3.25), rice watery stool (OR 1.92; 95% CI: 1.54-2.41), and vomiting more than three times in the past 24 hours (OR 1.30; 95% CI: 1.06-1.58). Higher monthly income (OR 0.92; 95% CI: 0.86-0.98), > 8 years of education (OR 0.79; 95% CI: 0.63-1.00), and having more than five people living at home (OR 0.80; 95% CI: 0.66-0.98) were associated with lower odds of bacterial diarrhea. These findings may help guide the development of predictive tools to aid in identifying patients with bacterial diarrhea for timely and appropriate use of antibiotics.

PMID:34724626 | DOI:10.4269/ajtmh.21-0580

ACS Chem Biol. 2021 Nov 1. doi: 10.1021/acschembio.1c00581. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Bioactive compounds have gained substantial attention in research and have conferred great advancements in the industrial and pharmacological fields. Highly diverse fungi and their metabolome serve as a big platform to be explored for their diverse bioactive compounds. Omics tools coupled with bioinformatics, statistical, and well-developed algorithm tools have elucidated immense knowledge about fungal endophyte derived bioactive compounds. Further, these compounds are subjected to chromatography-gas chromatography and liquid chromatography (LC), spectroscopy-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and “soft ionization” technique-matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) based analytical techniques for structural characterization. The mass spectrometry (MS)-based approach, being highly sensitive, reproducible, and reliable, produces quick and high-profile identification. Coupling these techniques with MS has resulted in a descriptive account of the identification and quantification of fungal endophyte derived bioactive compounds. This paper emphasizes the workflows of the above-mentioned techniques, their advancement, and future directions to study the unraveled area of chemistry of fungal endophyte-derived bioactive compounds.

PMID:34724607 | DOI:10.1021/acschembio.1c00581

J Genet Eng Biotechnol. 2021 Nov 1;19(1):169. doi: 10.1186/s43141-021-00272-6.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Genetic variants in the transcription factor 7-like 2 (TCF7L2) gene are related with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) in various populations, but there are not enough statistics regarding GDM among Egyptian women. We aimed by this study to evaluate the effect of two polymorphisms of rs7903146 and rs12255372 in the TCF7L2 gene with the development of GDM among Egyptian women.

RESULTS: We enrolled 114 pregnant women with normal glucose tolerance and 114 with GDM according to the International Association of Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Groups (IADPSG) guidelines. We gathered records on blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), blood glucose level, hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c), and lipid profile. The genotyping of rs7903146 and rs12255372 polymorphisms was carried out using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). The statistical significance of prepregnancy BMI, fasting blood sugar (FBS), HbA1c, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and total cholesterol (Tch) was higher, P < 0.001, in GDM women in comparison to pregnant women without GDM. CT and TT genotypes in rs7903146 SNP were 46.5% vs. 54%, P <0.04, OR; CI = 1.9 (1.0 to 3.78); TT carriers were 37.7% vs. 9.6%, P <0.001, OR (CI) = 8.9 (3.7-21.1), respectively. For the TCFL2 gene rs12255372 SNP, GT carriers were 48.2% vs. 39.5%, P= 0.004, OR (CI) = 2.3 (1.3-4.2), while TT carriers were 24.6% vs. 7.9%, P < 0.001, OR (CI) = 6 (2.5-14.3).

CONCLUSION: The study showed there is a significantly higher incidence of CT/TT genotypes in rs7903146 SNP and GT/TT genotypes in rs12255372 SNP in TCF7L2 gene among GDM women in comparison to healthy pregnant women (controls).

PMID:34724590 | DOI:10.1186/s43141-021-00272-6

JAMA Netw Open. 2021 Nov 1;4(11):e2128898. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.28898.

ABSTRACT

IMPORTANCE: Clinical trial registries are important for gaining an overview of ongoing research efforts and for deterring and identifying publication bias and selective outcome reporting. The reliability of the information in trial registries is uncertain.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the reliability of information across registries for trials with multiple registrations.

EVIDENCE REVIEW: For this systematic review, 360 protocols of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) approved by research ethics committees in Switzerland, the UK, Canada, and Germany in 2012 were evaluated. Clinical trial registries were searched from March to September 2019 for corresponding registrations of these RCTs. For RCTS that were recorded in more than 1 clinical trial registry, key trial characteristics that should be identical among all trial registries (ie, sponsor, funding source, primary outcome, target sample size, trial status, date of first patient enrollment, results available, and main publication indexed) were extracted in duplicate. Agreement between the different trial registries for these key characteristics was analyzed descriptively. Data analyses were conducted from May 1 to November 30, 2020. Representatives from clinical trial registries were interviewed to discuss the study findings between February 1 and March 31, 2021.

FINDINGS: The analysis included 197 RCTs registered in more than 1 trial registry (151 in 2 registries and 46 in 3 registries), with 188 trials in ClinicalTrials.gov, 185 in the European Union Drug Regulating Authorities Clinical Trials Database (EudraCT), 20 in ISRCTN, and 47 in other registries. The agreement of key information across all registries was as follows: 178 of 197 RCTs (90%; 95% CI, 85%-94%) for sponsor, 18 of 20 (90%; 95% CI, 68%-99%) for funding source (funding was not reported on ClinicalTrials.gov), 154 of 197 (78%; 95% CI, 72%-84%) for primary outcome, 90 of 197 (46%; 95% CI, 39%-53%) for trial status, 122 of 194 (63%; 95% CI, 56%-70%) for target sample size, and 43 of 57 (75%; 95% CI, 62%-86%) for the date of first patient enrollment when the comparison time was increased to 30 days (date of first patient enrollment was not reported on EudraCT). For results availability in trial registries, agreement was 122 of 197 RCTs (62%; 95% CI, 55%-69%) for summary data reported in the registry and 91 of 197 (46%; 95% CI, 39%-53%) for whether a published article with the main results was indexed. Different legal requirements were stated as the main reason for inconsistencies by representatives of clinical trial registries.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this systematic review, for a substantial proportion of registered RCTs, information about key trial characteristics was inconsistent across trial registries, raising concerns about the reliability of the information provided in these registries. Further harmonization across clinical trial registries may be necessary to increase their usefulness.

PMID:34724557 | DOI:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.28898