Tag: nevin manimala

Conserv Biol. 2021 Feb 25. doi: 10.1111/cobi.13724. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Wildlife health assessments help identify populations at risk of starvation, disease, and decline from anthropogenic impacts on natural habitats. Here, we provide an overview of available health assessment studies in non-captive vertebrates, and propose a framework to strategically integrate health assessments in population monitoring. Using a systematic approach, we performed a thorough assessment of studies examining multiple health parameters of non-captive vertebrate species from 1982 to 2020 (n = 261). We quantified trends in study design and diagnostic methods across taxa. We found a spatial mismatch between biodiversity hotspots and study location. Only 35% of studies involved international or cross-border collaboration. IUCN Red List non-threatened species represented 49% of species assessed, a trend likely associated with the regional focus of most studies. We identified a critical need for using statistically adequate sample sizes for studies establishing reference ranges, and strongly suggest following strict protocols when planning the study design. The main health assessment methods used across all taxa were blood analysis (89%), body composition assessment methods (81%), physical examination (72%) and faecal analysis (24% of studies). Based on our findings, we propose a conceptual framework for improved design and standardization for quality wildlife health assessments. Integrating a physiological and ecological understanding of species resilience towards threatening processes will enable informed decision making regarding the conservation of threatened species. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

PMID:33634525 | DOI:10.1111/cobi.13724

Int Urol Nephrol. 2021 Feb 25. doi: 10.1007/s11255-021-02812-y. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To evaluate the effect of artery-only (AO) and artery-vein (AV) clamping during partial nephrectomy (PN) on short- and long-term renal function outcome.

METHODS: Medical records of 154 patients in the AO group and 192 patients in the AV group who underwent open and minimally invasive (laparoscopic/robotic) PN between January 2011 and January 2018 were retrospectively assessed. Preoperative patient and tumor-specific characteristics in addition to perioperative factors and renal function outcomes were compared. The change in the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) from postoperative 1-3 days, 12 and 24 months after surgery was calculated. Acute kidney injury (AKI) was defined a as a > 25% reduction in eGFR.

RESULTS: There were no statistically significant differences between the clamping techniques in terms of postoperative 1-3 days, 12 and 24 months eGFR change percentage and risk of progression to chronic kidney disease (CKD). No significant difference in short- and long-term renal functions was found between the minimally invasive or open AO and AV clamping subgroups at any time point. In multivariate analysis, the R.E.N.A.L score (AO group p = 0.026, AV group p < 0.001) and preoperative eGFR (AO group p < 0.001, AV group p = 0.010) were strong predictors of the acute kidney injury in both groups. Older age (AO group p = 0.045, AV group p = 0.010) and preoperative eGFR (AO group p = 0.008, AV group p = 0.002) were significantly associated with CKD progression at 2-year follow-up in both groups.

CONCLUSION: AV clamping does not adversely affect postoperative renal function compared to AO clamping. Preoperative patient- and tumor-related factors are more important for renal function regardless of the clamping technique.

PMID:33634431 | DOI:10.1007/s11255-021-02812-y

J Reconstr Microsurg. 2021 Feb 25. doi: 10.1055/s-0041-1724127. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Among the alternatives for the management of malignant bone tumors is the “devitalized autograft associated with vascularized fibula graft.” The devitalization process is achieved by pasteurization, irradiation, or freezing. The combination of these grafts has been broadly researched for more than 25 years. However, there is no research currently published comparing the various methods or their respective outcomes.

METHODS: A retrospective study was compiled of 26 devitalized autografts associated with vascularized fibula performed to limb salvage of malignant bone tumors. They were divided into two groups according to the devitalization method: either freezing (12 procedures) or irradiation (14 procedures). Clinical, radiographic, and scintigraphic results were assessed at least 24 months after surgery.

RESULTS: The union rates reached 83.3% in the freezing group and 92.8% in the irradiated group but did not express different outcomes. Scintigraphic viability was observed in all the grafts that achieved radiographic union (Mann-Whitney U-test: p = 0.005). Three patients had nonunion, with only one having no viability in the scintigraphy (Mann-Whitney U-test: p = 0.001). There was no malignant recurrence in the autograft, only in surrounding soft tissues. Local recurrence was statistically higher in larger tumors (Mann-Whitney U-test: p = 0.025).

CONCLUSION: Both groups presented similar union rates and are considered safe to devitalize bone graft despite different outcomes observed. The survivor rates observed could be limited by the existence of the techniques.

PMID:33634442 | DOI:10.1055/s-0041-1724127

Facial Plast Surg. 2021 Feb 25. doi: 10.1055/s-0041-1722912. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

There has been a growing interest in improving the informed consent process to ensure patients truly understand the benefits, risks, and alternatives of their procedures. Herein, we sought to describe the production of an educational video to supplement the traditional rhinoplasty informed consent process. Additionally, we evaluate satisfaction and risk recall among prospective rhinoplasty patients who participated in the video-assisted informed consent process. One author attended 30 rhinoplasty consultations where informed consent was performed and generated 65 questions related to the benefits, risks, alternatives, and general knowledge of rhinoplasty operations. A video of the senior author answering these questions was filmed and edited to 25 minutes. Prospective rhinoplasty patients watched the video before their initial consultation and were asked to complete two surveys assessing their satisfaction with the video-assisted process as well as their ability to recall risks discussed in the video. Understandability and actionability of the video was assessed by three independent reviewers using the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool. Postvideo surveys were completed by 40 patients. Patients strongly agreed that the video informed them about rhinoplasty risks and benefits (4.90/5.00), effectively answered their questions and/or concerns (4.78/5.00), and provided adequate information before surgery (4.85/5.00). Participants strongly recommended that all prospective patients watch the video prior to surgery (4.97/5.00). Participants on average correctly answered 4.00 ± 0.877 out of five risk recall questions. There was no statistically significant difference in risk recall performance between college graduates (4.19 ± 0.602) and those who did not graduate college (3.79 ± 1.08), p = 0.076. No significant correlation was found between patient age and recall performance (r = -0.011), p = 0.943. The overall mean understandability and actionability scores for the video were 100%. Video-assisted informed consent for rhinoplasty may enhance and overcome limitations to the traditional verbal consent process by ensuring comprehensive, standardized, and readily understandable information.

PMID:33634455 | DOI:10.1055/s-0041-1722912

J Vet Intern Med. 2021 Feb 26. doi: 10.1111/jvim.16067. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) allows for detection of fibrosis in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) by quantification of the extracellular volume fraction (ECV).

HYPOTHESIS/OBJECTIVES: To quantify native T1 mapping and ECV in cats. We hypothesize that native T1 mapping and ECV will be significantly increased in HCM cats compared with healthy cats.

ANIMALS: Seventeen healthy and 12 preclinical HCM, age-matched, client-owned cats.

METHODS: Prospective observational study. Tests performed included indirect blood pressure, CBC, biochemical analysis including total thyroid, urinalysis, transthoracic echocardiogram, and CMR. Cats were considered healthy if all tests were within normal limits and a diagnosis of HCM was determined by the presence of left ventricular concentric hypertrophy ≥6 mm on echocardiography.

RESULTS: There were statistically significant differences in LV mass (healthy = 5.87 g, HCM = 10.3 g, P < .0001), native T1 mapping (healthy = 1122 ms, HCM = 1209 ms, P = .004), and ECV (healthy = 26.0%, HCM = 32.6%, P < .0001). Variables of diastolic function including deceleration time of early diastolic transmitral flow (DTE), ratio between peak velocity of early diastolic transmitral flow and peak velocity of late diastolic transmitral flow (E : A), and peak velocity of late diastolic transmitral flow (A wave) were significantly correlated with ECV (DTE; r = 0.73 P = .007, E : A; r = -0.75 P = .004, A wave; r = 0.76 P = .004).

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE: Quantitative assessment of cardiac ECV is feasible and can provide additional information not available using echocardiography.

PMID:33634479 | DOI:10.1111/jvim.16067

J Digit Imaging. 2021 Feb 25. doi: 10.1007/s10278-021-00431-8. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

To assist physicians identify COVID-19 and its manifestations through the automatic COVID-19 recognition and classification in chest CT images with deep transfer learning. In this retrospective study, the used chest CT image dataset covered 422 subjects, including 72 confirmed COVID-19 subjects (260 studies, 30,171 images), 252 other pneumonia subjects (252 studies, 26,534 images) that contained 158 viral pneumonia subjects and 94 pulmonary tuberculosis subjects, and 98 normal subjects (98 studies, 29,838 images). In the experiment, subjects were split into training (70%), validation (15%) and testing (15%) sets. We utilized the convolutional blocks of ResNets pretrained on the public social image collections and modified the top fully connected layer to suit our task (the COVID-19 recognition). In addition, we tested the proposed method on a finegrained classification task; that is, the images of COVID-19 were further split into 3 main manifestations (ground-glass opacity with 12,924 images, consolidation with 7418 images and fibrotic streaks with 7338 images). Similarly, the data partitioning strategy of 70%-15%-15% was adopted. The best performance obtained by the pretrained ResNet50 model is 94.87% sensitivity, 88.46% specificity, 91.21% accuracy for COVID-19 versus all other groups, and an overall accuracy of 89.01% for the three-category classification in the testing set. Consistent performance was observed from the COVID-19 manifestation classification task on images basis, where the best overall accuracy of 94.08% and AUC of 0.993 were obtained by the pretrained ResNet18 (P < 0.05). All the proposed models have achieved much satisfying performance and were thus very promising in both the practical application and statistics. Transfer learning is worth for exploring to be applied in recognition and classification of COVID-19 on CT images with limited training data. It not only achieved higher sensitivity (COVID-19 vs the rest) but also took far less time than radiologists, which is expected to give the auxiliary diagnosis and reduce the workload for the radiologists.

PMID:33634413 | DOI:10.1007/s10278-021-00431-8

J Digit Imaging. 2021 Feb 25. doi: 10.1007/s10278-021-00433-6. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) mandates clinical decision support mechanism (CDSM) consultation for all advanced imaging. There are a growing number of studies examining the association of CDSM use with imaging appropriateness, but a paucity of multicenter data. This observational study evaluates the association between changes in advanced imaging appropriateness scores with increasing provider exposure to CDSM. Each provider’s first 200 consecutive anonymized requisitions for advanced imaging (CT, MRI, ultrasound, nuclear medicine) using a single CDSM (CareSelect, Change Healthcare) between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2019 were collected from 288 US institutions. Changes in imaging requisition proportions among four appropriateness categories (“usually appropriate” [green], “may be appropriate” [yellow], “usually not appropriate” [red], and unmapped [gray]) were evaluated in relation to the chronological order of the requisition for each provider and total provider exposure to CDSM using logistic regression fits and Wald tests. The number of providers and requisitions included was 244,158 and 7,345,437, respectively. For 10,123 providers with ≥ 200 requisitions (2,024,600 total requisitions), the fraction of green, yellow, and red requisitions among the last 10 requisitions changed by +3.0% (95% confidence interval +2.6% to +3.4%), -0.8% (95% CI -0.5% to -1.1%), and -3.0% (95% CI 3.3% to -2.7%) in comparison with the first 10, respectively. Providers with > 190 requisitions had 8.5% (95% CI 6.3% to 10.7%) more green requisitions, 2.3% (0.7% to 3.9%) fewer yellow requisitions, and 0.5% (95% CI -1.0% to 2.0%) fewer red (not statistically significant) requisitions relative to providers with ≤ 10 requisitions. Increasing provider exposure to CDSM is associated with improved appropriateness scores for advanced imaging requisitions.

PMID:33634414 | DOI:10.1007/s10278-021-00433-6

J Digit Imaging. 2021 Feb 25. doi: 10.1007/s10278-021-00432-7. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Jaundice occurs as a symptom of various diseases, such as hepatitis, the liver cancer, gallbladder or pancreas. Therefore, clinical measurement with special equipment is a common method that is used to identify the total serum bilirubin level in patients. Fully automated multi-class recognition of jaundice combines two key issues: (1) the critical difficulties in multi-class recognition of jaundice approaches contrasting with the binary class and (2) the subtle difficulties in multi-class recognition of jaundice represent extensive individuals variability of high-resolution photos of subjects, huge coherency between healthy controls and occult jaundice, as well as broadly inhomogeneous color distribution. We introduce a novel approach for multi-class recognition of jaundice to detect occult jaundice, obvious jaundice and healthy controls. First, region annotation network is developed and trained to propose eye candidates. Subsequently, an efficient jaundice recognizer is proposed to learn similarities, context, localization features and globalization characteristics on photos of subjects. Finally, both networks are unified by using shared convolutional layer. Evaluation of the structured model in a comparative study resulted in a significant performance boost (categorical accuracy for mean 91.38%) over the independent human observer. Our work was exceeded against the state-of-the-art convolutional neural network (96.85% and 90.06% for training and validation subset, respectively) and showed a remarkable categorical result for mean 95.33% on testing subset. The proposed network makes a performance better than physicians. This work demonstrates the strength of our proposal to help bringing an efficient tool for multi-class recognition of jaundice into clinical practice.

PMID:33634415 | DOI:10.1007/s10278-021-00432-7

Behav Res Methods. 2021 Feb 25. doi: 10.3758/s13428-020-01520-2. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

For decades, statisticians and methodologists have insisted researchers utilize graphical analysis much more heavily. Despite cogent and passionate recommendations, there has been no graphical revolution. Instead, researchers rely heavily on misleading graphics that violate visual processing heuristics. Perhaps the main reason for the persistence of deceptive graphics is software; most software familiar to psychological researchers suffer from poor defaults and limited capabilities. Also, visualization is ancillary to statistical analysis, providing an incentive to not produce graphics at all. In this paper, we argue that every statistical analysis must have an accompanying graphic, and we introduce the point-and-click software Flexplot, available both in JASP and Jamovi. We then present the theoretical framework that guides Flexplot, as well as show how to perform the most common statistical analyses in psychological literature.

PMID:33634423 | DOI:10.3758/s13428-020-01520-2

Eur J Epidemiol. 2021 Feb 25. doi: 10.1007/s10654-021-00727-7. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

In response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, public health scientists have produced a large and rapidly expanding body of literature that aims to answer critical questions, such as the proportion of the population in a geographic area that has been infected; the transmissibility of the virus and factors associated with high infectiousness or susceptibility to infection; which groups are the most at risk of infection, morbidity and mortality; and the degree to which antibodies confer protection to re-infection. Observational studies are subject to a number of different biases, including confounding, selection bias, and measurement error, that may threaten their validity or influence the interpretation of their results. To assist in the critical evaluation of a vast body of literature and contribute to future study design, we outline and propose solutions to biases that can occur across different categories of observational studies of COVID-19. We consider potential biases that could occur in five categories of studies: (1) cross-sectional seroprevalence, (2) longitudinal seroprotection, (3) risk factor studies to inform interventions, (4) studies to estimate the secondary attack rate, and (5) studies that use secondary attack rates to make inferences about infectiousness and susceptibility.

PMID:33634345 | DOI:10.1007/s10654-021-00727-7