Tag: pubmed

Swiss Med Wkly. 2023 Jul 17;153:40091. doi: 10.57187/smw.2023.40091.

ABSTRACT

AIMS: There is a lack of national and international publicly available long-term survival outcome data from individual healthcare providers in medical oncology. In this study, the overall survival at a medium-sized medical oncology service at Olten Cantonal Hospital was evaluated and compared as a local benchmark report with national data from the Swiss Cancer Registries. Furthermore, adherence to treatment guidelines was investigated as an additional quality indicator.

METHODS: The 1- and 5-year overall survival of all patients with breast cancer, testicular cancer, colon cancer, non-small-cell lung cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma in Switzerland from 2008 to 2017 with at least one outpatient visit at the in-house medical oncology service at Olten Cantonal Hospital was analysed and compared with the specific overall population-based outcome data provided by the National Agency for Cancer Registration (NACR), which were set as a national benchmark. Until 2020, no data from the Canton of Solothurn, to which Olten belongs, were reported to the NACR. Further, adherence to internationally recognized clinical guidelines for stage-specific treatment was assessed.

RESULTS: Until September 8, 2020, data on 842 patients with a median follow-up period of 70 months were collected and analysed. The 1- and 5-year overall survival for colon and non-small cell cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and the 5-year overall survival for testicular cancer in the Olten cohort did not significantly differ from the NACR data. The 1-year overall survival for testicular cancer was not comparable statistically. The 5-year overall survival for breast cancer (unadjusted for stage) was significantly higher in the NACR collective (84.5%) than in the Olten collective (79.7%) but not for the individual breast cancer stages. The Olten collective included approximately 2.5 times as many patients with stage 4 breast cancer (17.5%) as the NACR collective (6.9%). Approximately 92.4% of the patients in the curative setting and 85.8% of the patients in the palliative setting received first-line treatment according to guidelines.

CONCLUSIONS: The statistically comparable local 1- and 5-year overall survival of the analysed malignancies, with adjustment for stage for the 5-year overall survival for breast cancer, is in line with the national benchmark. Adherence to treatment guidelines is high.

PMID:37459836 | DOI:10.57187/smw.2023.40091

Nurse Educ Today. 2023 Jul 5;129:105893. doi: 10.1016/j.nedt.2023.105893. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To investigate the preferences for case-based learning programmes among undergraduate nursing students.

METHOD: A questionnaire was designed based on a discrete choice experiment, and 227 undergraduate nursing students were investigated. In STATA 15.0 software, the data were statistically analysed using a mixed logit model.

RESULT: All attributes in our study were found to have a significant influence on undergraduate nursing students’ preferences for case-based learning programmes. The students’ preference for the CBL programme was influenced by the clinical internship experience and type of university. Furthermore, the most ideal scenario was found to be video case modality, unfolding delivery, provided by academic experts and clinical instructors, group size 9-11, adequate feedback, and fragmented case content.

CONCLUSION: The undergraduate nursing students’ preferences for case-based learning programmes were affected by the provider, case modality, modality, group size, feedback, and case content. Our results can provide useful information for nursing educators to gain insight into student preferences and formulate case-based learning programs.

PMID:37459830 | DOI:10.1016/j.nedt.2023.105893

Nurse Educ Today. 2023 Jul 15;129:105902. doi: 10.1016/j.nedt.2023.105902. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Nursing students in their final year of study will soon become responsible for the care and management of people with diabetes, and they need to be knowledgeable to provide adequate information.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to assess nursing students’ knowledge regarding diabetes care and management.

DESIGN: A descriptive cross-sectional multicenter study.

SETTINGS AND PARTICIPANTS: A convenience sample of all nursing students’ internship enrolled at three government universities in Saudi Arabia.

METHODS: 306 Saudi nursing students were surveyed with a self-administered questionnaire of the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants. The second part contained 23 multiple-choice questions of the Michigan Diabetes Knowledge Test. Data were collected from July to September 2022.

RESULTS: The overall percentage of correct responses was 49.28 %. There was a significant difference between sex, the university attended, attendance in courses related to diabetes, and diabetes management guidelines in any course and their knowledge about diabetes care and management (p = 0.024, 0.001, 0.036, and 0.038, respectively). There was a significant difference between nursing students’ general knowledge and insulin use knowledge (p = 0.001). A multiple regression analysis revealed that the university attended was the only statistically significant factor (p = 0.001).

CONCLUSION: Nursing internship students are likely to be responsible for providing people with diabetes care and management once they qualify. Inappropriate knowledge negatively affects the care and management of people with diabetes. Information related to diabetic insulin therapy should be provided in more detail in the nursing curriculum.

PMID:37459829 | DOI:10.1016/j.nedt.2023.105902

J Environ Manage. 2023 Jul 15;344:118604. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118604. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the regional implications of China’s 2017 import ban on plastic waste by examining U.S. census data. A statistically significant decrease in total U.S. plastic waste exports was found, dropping from about 1.4 million tons to 0.6 million tons in the post-ban period. California remained the top exporter, throughout both pre- and post-ban periods, while South Carolina exhibited the highest per capita exports. Malaysia emerged as the largest importer of U.S. plastic waste, followed by Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. The ban also led to a change in the composition of the exported plastic waste. Ethylene polymers increased from 32.6% of total exports in the pre-ban period to 46.9% in the post-ban period. Other plastics (vinyl chloride polymers, styrene polymers, and for plastics not elsewhere specified or included) decreased from 67.4% of total exports in the pre-ban period to 53.1% in the post-ban period. Moreover, we found that exporting plastic waste has significant environmental and human health impacts. For example, the Global Warming Potential (GWP) decreased from 20 million tons CO_2-eq in the scenario where 100% of plastics are exported, or 25 million tons exported from the U.S. since 2002, to -11.1 million tons CO_2-eq in the scenario where 100% of plastics are treated domestically. Transportation exacerbates these impacts for exported waste scenarios, increasing to 5.4 million tons CO_2-eq when plastics are exported by ship while decreasing to 0.9 million tons CO_2-eq for domestic treatment. Although exporting plastic waste is initially cost-effective, our study highlights that investing in domestic waste management can yield significant long-term benefits, considering the environmental and public health impacts. Therefore, it is crucial to prioritize context-specific solutions to address the challenges of the evolving global plastic waste landscape.

PMID:37459814 | DOI:10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118604

Comput Biol Med. 2023 Jun 16;164:107094. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107094. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

In recent years, research in the field of bioinformatics has focused on predicting the raw sequences of proteins, and some scholars consider DNA-binding protein prediction as a classification task. Many statistical and machine learning-based methods have been widely used in DNA-binding proteins research. The aforementioned methods are indeed more efficient than those based on manual classification, but there is still room for improvement in terms of prediction accuracy and speed. In this study, researchers used Average Blocks, Discrete Cosine Transform, Discrete Wavelet Transform, Global encoding, Normalized Moreau-Broto Autocorrelation and Pseudo position-specific scoring matrix to extract evolutionary features. A dynamic deep network based on lifelong learning architecture was then proposed in order to fuse six features and thus allow for more efficient classification of DNA-binding proteins. The multi-feature fusion allows for a more accurate description of the desired protein information than single features. This model offers a fresh perspective on the dichotomous classification problem in bioinformatics and broadens the application field of lifelong learning. The researchers ran trials on three datasets and contrasted them with other classification techniques to show the model’s effectiveness in this study. The findings demonstrated that the model used in this research was superior to other approaches in terms of single-sample specificity (81.0%, 83.0%) and single-sample sensitivity (82.4%, 90.7%), and achieves high accuracy on the benchmark dataset (88.4%, 80.0%, and 76.6%).

PMID:37459792 | DOI:10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107094

J Diabetes Complications. 2023 Jun 6;37(8):108528. doi: 10.1016/j.jdiacomp.2023.108528. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Children with type one diabetes mellitus (T1DM) may have subclinical myocardial insults but large heterogeneity exists among the reports. This study aimed to compare myocardial strain values of the left ventricle (LV) in paediatric patients with T1DM without overt cardiac disease and healthy controls.

METHODS: Five databases (MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science and Cochrane central register of controlled trials) were searched from inception to March 30, 2020. The studies reporting two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography in asymptomatic T1DM paediatric patients and control groups were included. Pooled mean strain values in each group and mean difference (MD) between the two groups for LV global longitudinal strain (LVGLS) and LV global circumferential strain (LVGCS) were assessed using a random effects model.

RESULTS: Ten studies (755 T1DM and 610 control) with LVGLS were included with 6 studies having LVGCS (534 T1DM and 403 control). Patients with T1DM had overall 3 percentage points lower LVGLS than healthy subjects (18.4 %, 95 % confidence interval [17.1, 19.6] vs 21.5 % [20.3, 22.7], MD = -3.01 [-4.30, -1.71]). A similar result was seen in LVGCS (18.7 % [15.4, 22.0] vs. 21.4 % [18.1, 24.6], MD = -3.10[-6.47, 0.26]) but not statistically significant. Meta-regression identified those with higher Haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) had worse GLS.

CONCLUSIONS: Subclinical LV dysfunction among patients with T1DM occurs as early as in their childhood, while even EF is preserved. The longitudinal cardiac function is altered, but not the circumferential. GLS can be used to detect subclinical LV systolic dysfunction in paediatric population.

PMID:37459780 | DOI:10.1016/j.jdiacomp.2023.108528

J Psychiatr Res. 2023 Jul 10;165:34-40. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.07.009. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

There is a widening disparity in suicide deaths between United States (U.S.) military veterans and nonveterans. However, it is unclear if there are similar differences in suicidal ideation, planning, and attempts that often precipitate these deaths. A better understanding of trends in suicidal thoughts and behaviors could illuminate opportunities for prevention. We examined pooled cross-sectional data (N = 479,801 adults) from the 2008 to 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. We examined differences in past-year suicidal ideation, suicide planning, and suicide attempts between U.S. veterans (n = 26,508) and nonveterans (n = 453,293). We conducted post hoc analyses to examine for differences in these relationships by race/ethnicity and sex. Lastly, we examined trends in these outcomes over time and tested for differences in trends by veteran status. Overall, veterans had significantly greater odds of past-year suicidal ideation (aOR = 1.33, 95% CI 1.20 to 1.47) and suicide planning (aOR = 1.52, 95% CI 1.30 to 1.78) compared to nonveterans. However, the association between veteran status and past-year suicide attempt was not statistically significant (aOR = 1.29, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.68). These relationships did not differ by race/ethnicity or sex (ps > 0.05). Among all adults, there were significant linear increases in past-year suicidal ideation, planning, and attempts (ps < 0.001). However, these trends did not differ between veterans and nonveterans (ps > 0.05). Veterans may be more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and behaviors than nonveteran adults. Upward trends in suicidal thoughts and behaviors among both veterans and nonveterans from 2008 to 2019 highlight opportunities for intervention.

PMID:37459776 | DOI:10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.07.009

Mar Pollut Bull. 2023 Jul 15;194(Pt B):115288. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.115288. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are managed to conserve ecosystems however increased reporting highlights the observations of marine debris within these areas. The coastline of Cabrera Natural Park (Cabrera MPA) was surveyed in February, March, May, and July of 2021 to evaluate the seasonal trend of marine debris between winter and summer months. A general value of 6.94 items/km, ranging from 4.38 ± 4.55 items/km in July to 12.57 ± 17.56 items/km in March, was detected with no statistical differences between areas or surveyed months. Abundance of stranded debris (77 %) was statistically higher than floating debris (23 %). Prevailed floating plastic pieces 2.5 >< 50 cm and stranded nets and pieces of nets >50 cm. Artificial polymer materials, non-sourced debris, and non-Single Use Plastics were the most common items identified. This study highlights the importance of applying mitigation measures to avoid the presence of marine debris in areas of ecological interest.

PMID:37459766 | DOI:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.115288

J Clin Oncol. 2023 Jul 20;41(21):3663-3669. doi: 10.1200/JCO.22.02760.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of bevacizumab when added to first-line oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy (either capecitabine plus oxaliplatin [XELOX] or fluorouracil/folinic acid plus oxaliplatin [FOLFOX-4]) in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (MCRC).

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients with MCRC were randomly assigned, in a 2 × 2 factorial design, to XELOX versus FOLFOX-4, and then to bevacizumab versus placebo. The primary end point was progression-free survival (PFS).

RESULTS: A total of 1,401 patients were randomly assigned in this 2 × 2 analysis. Median progression-free survival (PFS) was 9.4 months in the bevacizumab group and 8.0 months in the placebo group (hazard ratio [HR], 0.83; 97.5% CI, 0.72 to 0.95; P = .0023). Median overall survival was 21.3 months in the bevacizumab group and 19.9 months in the placebo group (HR, 0.89; 97.5% CI, 0.76 to 1.03; P = .077). Response rates were similar in both arms. Analysis of treatment withdrawals showed that, despite protocol allowance of treatment continuation until disease progression, only 29% and 47% of bevacizumab and placebo recipients, respectively, were treated until progression. The toxicity profile of bevacizumab was consistent with that documented in previous trials.

CONCLUSION: The addition of bevacizumab to oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy significantly improved PFS in this first-line trial in patients with MCRC. Overall survival differences did not reach statistical significance, and response rate was not improved by the addition of bevacizumab. Treatment continuation until disease progression may be necessary in order to optimize the contribution of bevacizumab to therapy.

PMID:37459755 | DOI:10.1200/JCO.22.02760

Transplant Rev (Orlando). 2023 Jul 8;37(3):100777. doi: 10.1016/j.trre.2023.100777. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Effective workup and listing of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients for renal transplantation, often with multiple co-morbidities, poses a challenge for transplant teams. Obesity is a common co-morbidity associated with adverse outcomes in ESRD and kidney transplant (KT) recipients. Bariatric and metabolic surgery (BMS) has long been established as a safe and effective treatment for morbid obesity. In this study, the authors aimed to evaluate the strength of evidence for both the efficacy and safety of bariatric surgery in patients with ESRD or kidney transplantation.

METHODS: A literature search was performed using key terms including “transplantation”, “kidney”, “renal”, “obesity”, and “bariatric”. Databases searched include MEDLINE, EMBASE and Web of Science from inception to date (April 2021). Methodological quality was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa tool. Selected articles were then categorised into patients awaiting waiting list acceptance, patients awaiting transplantation, patients undergoing simultaneous BMS + KT and patients undergoing BMS following a previous renal transplant. Summary effects are presented with a level of statistical significance and 95% Confidence Intervals.

RESULTS: A total of 28 articles were selected following the literature search. Fourteen studies on patients awaiting listing (n = 1903), nine on patients on the KT waiting list (n = 196), a single study on simultaneous BMS and KT and ten studies on patients undergoing BMS following KT (n = 198). Mean change in BMI for patients awaiting listing was -11.3 kg/m² (95%CI: -15.3 to -7.3, p < 0.001), mean change in BMI for patients listed for KT was -11.2 kg/m 2(95%CI: -12.9 to -9.5, p 0.001) and mean change for patients with prior KT was -11.0 kg/m² (95%CI: -7.09 to -14.9, p < 0.001). The combined mortality rate for patients who had undergone both BMS and KT was 4% (n = 15).

DISCUSSION: This review demonstrates BMS is both safe and efficacious in patients with ESRD prior to KT and in those post KT. It would enable difficult-to-list obese recipients the possibility to undergo transplantation and should be considered as part of the work up process.

PMID:37459746 | DOI:10.1016/j.trre.2023.100777