Tag: statistics

J Sex Med. 2021 Jul 16:S1743-6095(21)00529-4. doi: 10.1016/j.jsxm.2021.06.004. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Chemotherapeutics, one of the standard treatment options for cancer worldwide, have various adverse effects, including erectile dysfunction (ED).

AIM: To investigate erectile function in an animal model after administration of the anticancer agent oxaliplatin (L-OHP).

METHODS: Male Wistar/ST rats were divided into 2 groups: L-OHP rats (n = 21), which were intravenously administered L-OHP (4 mg/kg; twice a week for 4 weeks), and Control rats (n = 21), which were injected with the same volume of 5% glucose solution, using the same dosing schedule. At the end of the study period, erectile function was evaluated by measuring intracavernous pressure (ICP) and mean arterial pressure (MAP) after cavernous nerve stimulation (n = 9-10). Endothelial function was evaluated with an isometric tension study using corpus cavernosum strips (n = 11). Western blot analysis was used to assess neuronal nitric oxide (nNOS) and endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) protein levels (n = 7). Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to assess the expression of inflammation- and oxidative stress-related markers (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase-1, p22^phox, interleukin [IL]-6, and nuclear factor-kappa B) (n = 6). Statistical significance was determined using the Student’s t-test.

OUTCOMES: The L-OHP group had a significantly lower ICP:MAP ratio than the control group (P < .05). Compared to the Control group, the L-OHP group exhibited significantly lower responses to ACh and eNOS protein levels and significantly higher inflammatory biomarker levels.

CLINICAL TRANSLATION: The results based on this animal model indicate that use of the anticancer agent L-OHP should be considered as a risk factor for ED occurring via reduction of NO bioavailability in humans; our results provide possible treatment strategies for maintaining the erectile function of cancer survivors.

STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS: Our study showed that the anticancer agent L-OHP has the propensity to cause ED in rats. A major limitation of this study is the lack of an established cure for ED associated with L-OHP and the lack of clinical evidence.

CONCLUSIONS: L-OHP causes ED in rats via reduction of NO bioavailability caused by endothelial dysfunction. Kataoka T, Mori T, Suzuki J, et al. Oxaliplatin, an Anticancer Agent, Causes Erectile Dysfunction in Rats due to Endothelial Dysfunction. J Sex Med 2021;XX:XXX-XXX.

PMID:34281797 | DOI:10.1016/j.jsxm.2021.06.004

Clin Lung Cancer. 2021 Jun 24:S1525-7304(21)00158-3. doi: 10.1016/j.cllc.2021.06.007. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) has been widely used in the surgical treatment of thoracic diseases, and it suggested surgical and oncological advantages compared with open surgery. However, reports on the application of VATS in surgery of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) are scarce. This study aimed to explore the advantages and disadvantages of different surgical approaches in the treatment of pathological stage T1(pT1) SCLC in terms of safety, clinical outcomes, and lymph node dissection.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients who underwent lobectomy for pT1 SCLC between January 2014 and September 2017 were identified from the National Collaborative Lung Cancer Database (LinkDoc Database). The patients were stratified based on the surgery approach (VATS or open lobectomy). Perioperative outcomes and long-term survival were analyzed using SPSS software.

RESULTS: A total of 169 patients with pT1 SCLC met the criteria and were enrolled for this study, including 110 cases of VATS lobectomies and 59 cases of open lobectomies. VATS lobectomy was associated with less blood loss than open surgery (168.1 ± 237.4 vs. 340.0 ± 509.8 mL, P = .002). Open lobectomy harvested more N2 LNs (11.8 ± 8.2 vs. 8.4 ± 5.8, P = .048) and identified more metastasis positive LNs (3.1 ± 6.0 vs. 1.4 ± 3.0, P = .050). Open lobectomy associated with longer overall survival (OS) but has no statistical difference (23.4 ± 13.2 vs. 20.2 ± 10.9, P = .070).

CONCLUSION: Open lobectomy had better lymph node dissection results, and comparable postoperative complications, postoperative hospital stay, and OS to VATS lobectomy. Further studies may still be needed to confirm the recommendation of thoracoscopic approach as a routine surgical procedure for operable SCLC, and until then, open surgery should still be considered.

PMID:34281774 | DOI:10.1016/j.cllc.2021.06.007

Chin J Traumatol. 2021 May 21:S1008-1275(21)00086-9. doi: 10.1016/j.cjtee.2021.05.002. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The use of tourniquet in orthopedic surgeries facilitates operations by establishing a bloodless surgical field. However, many complications following the use of tourniquets have been reported. Tourniquet pain is the most common complication. This study aimed to find the actual incidence of pain associated with tourniquet use in orthopedic surgery and the various factors.

METHODS: It is a prospective observational study conducted on 132 consecutive cases. Patients aged between 18 and 70 years with musculoskeletal problems of the forearm and leg requiring surgery were included in the study. Patients with open injuries or contraindications such as diabetes mellitus, compromised circulatory states, neurological deficit, compartment syndrome and unable to give informed consent were excluded. The parameters assessed included duration of tourniquet use, tourniquet pressure, type of anesthesia, any interval release of the tourniquet and reapplication after a reperfusion period, whether upper or lower limb surgery, severity of tourniquet pain, timing of tourniquet release and complications. Chi-square and non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test were used for data analysis.

RESULTS: In upper limb surgeries, if duration of surgery was less than 60 min, 14 (51.8%) cases experienced tourniquet pain and 13 (48.1%) had no pain, and if duration of surgery was more than 60 min, 24 (60.0%) had pain and 16 (40.0%) experienced no pain. In lower limb surgeries if duration of surgery was less than 60 min, 2 (7.7%) experienced pain and 24 (92.3%) had no pain, and if duration of surgery was more than 60 min, 14 (35.8%) experienced pain and 25 (64.8%) had no pain. Degree of tourniquet pain increases with increase in the duration of surgery. Statistically there was significant association between tourniquet inflation time and tourniquet pain in both upper and lower limbs (p = 0.034 and 0.024, respectively) CONCLUSION: Incidence of tourniquet pain was in direct proportion to the duration of tourniquet use and was higher in cases with regional anesthesia. Other risk factors assessed including tourniquet pressure, upper or lower limb surgery, tourniquet release time and interval had no significant contribution to the incidence or severity of tourniquet pain.

PMID:34281783 | DOI:10.1016/j.cjtee.2021.05.002

J Voice. 2021 Jul 16:S0892-1997(21)00197-1. doi: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2021.06.010. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To analyze and compare cepstral measurements in singing and non-singing men and women to understand if vocal adaptations of singers reflect greater cepstral measurement results.

METHOD: The study included 91 vocally healthy individuals, consisting of 60 erudite or popular singers (30 males, 30 females) and 31 non-singers (16 males, 15 females). The Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP) and Cepstral Peak Prominence-Smoothed (CPPS) measures were carried out using the sustained /a/ vowel recorded with a unidirectional condenser microphone associated with a sound card on the computer. The Praat software (version 6.1.16) was used to extract the CPP and CPPS measurements. The intra and intergroup values obtained for each sex were compared using the t-test with a 5% significance level.

RESULTS: There was a CPP (P = 0,000) and CPPS (P = 0,000 and P = 0,001) value difference between the sexes in both groups. Cepstral measurements showed no statistically significant difference between singing and non-singing participants (male: P = 0,778 and P = 0,622; female: P = 0,622 and P = 0,460).

CONCLUSION: Men presented higher CPP and CPPS values than women, which may be related to the presence of the physiological posterior glottic cleft in women. The knowledge of the cepstral values of singers shows that singing specificities may not reflect in all vocal evaluations.

PMID:34281752 | DOI:10.1016/j.jvoice.2021.06.010

J Fr Ophtalmol. 2021 Jul 16:S0181-5512(21)00329-6. doi: 10.1016/j.jfo.2021.01.025. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: The goal of our study was to create a cross-cultural adaptation of the questionnaire « National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire » (NEI-VFQ-25) for the Tunisian population (Tu-VFQ-25) and to test its psychometric properties in a group of patients with chronic uveitis.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: The study consisted of two steps. The first was translation of the NEI-VFQ-25 and its cross-cultural adaptation to the Tunisian dialect (Tu-VFQ-25) according to the guidelines of Beaton et al. The second step consisted of studying the psychometric properties of the Tu-VFQ-25. Enrolled patients, diagnosed with chronic uveitis, were interviewed face-to-face by two different investigators, followed by a telephone interview by the first investigator 48hours later. Feasibility, internal consistency and reproducibility of the Tu-VFQ-25 were then tested using statistical methods.

RESULTS: The mean time taken to administrate the questionnaire to each of the 45 patients was 11min 40 s (± 2min 24 s). Internal consistency was acceptable, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients above 0.7 except the “Ocular Pain” and “Driving” subscales (0.645 and 0.559 respectively). Inter-observer reliability was excellent, with intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) ranging from 0.857 to 0.985 for all subscales. Test-retest reliability, assessed for 43 patients, was good to excellent, with ICC above 0.80 for all subscales except “General Vision,” which had a value of 0.786.

CONCLUSION: As with previous versions, the Tu-VFQ-25 is an easy and reliable tool for assessing vision-related quality of life of Tunisian patients with chronic uveitis.

PMID:34281759 | DOI:10.1016/j.jfo.2021.01.025

Cont Lens Anterior Eye. 2021 Jul 16:101489. doi: 10.1016/j.clae.2021.101489. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To investigate the ocular subclinical inflammatory response in two soft contact lens materials when used in combination with two different care systems (‘solutions’).

METHODS: Fifteen established soft contact lens wearers wore each of two lenses: Acuvue® 2 (CH) and Acuvue® Oasys® (SiH) or no lenses in random sequence for one week. Two care systems were used: a peroxide system: Oxysept 1 Step® (P) for the right lens and Opti-Free® Replenish® (MPS) for the left lens. After one week of lens/no lens wear, in vivo confocal microscopy (IVCM) of corneal and conjunctival regions was carried out. Density of presumed dendritic cells (DC) and ‘white spots’ (WS) were quantified. Impression cytology of the bulbar and upper eyelid margin conjunctivae was carried out and samples were analysed for CD45+, CD3+ and CD11c+ cells.

RESULTS: The SiH + MPS combination showed a greater inflammatory response compared to SiH + P in seven out of 12 parameters investigated (p < 0.05). The remaining five were not statistically different between the two solutions. The converse was found for the CH lens, with four of the 12 parameters showing a greater response with the P solution compared to the MPS (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSION: This study suggests that the SiH lens investigated demonstrated an upregulated response when used with a MPS compared to a P solution whereas the converse is true for the CH lens which showed a reduced response when used with a MPS compared to a P solution. This finding aids in the understanding of the biological underpinnings of manifest corneal inflammatory events during contact lens wear.

PMID:34281726 | DOI:10.1016/j.clae.2021.101489

J Formos Med Assoc. 2021 Jul 16:S0929-6646(21)00311-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jfma.2021.06.030. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: In this study we aimed to investigate the prevalence of abnormal nasality in patients with unilateral rhinosinusitis and their nasality outcomes following functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS).

METHODS: A total of 42 patients with unilateral chronic rhinosinusitis who underwent unilateral FESS between April 2016 and November 2017 were enrolled. Questionnaires on sinonasal symptoms and nasality were recorded. The change in the nasalance score of vowels [a], [i] [u], nasal consonant [m], 2 nasal syllable repetitions, and 2 Chinese sentences were measured. The patients were evaluated preoperatively, 6 months, and 12 months after the operation. The patients were divided into two groups, wide opening surgery and limited surgery, according to the severity of the disease.

RESULTS: Among 42 patients, the subjective reports showed that one-third of unilateral chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) patients had abnormal nasality preoperatively and significant improvement following FESS. The Lund-Mackay score was significantly negatively correlated with preoperative nasalance of [i] and positively correlated with change of nasalance of [i]. The increase in the value of [i] is statistically significant (p = 0.01) following FESS. In the further subgroup analysis, the change in nasalance was significant in the wide opening surgery group, but not in the limited surgery group.

CONCLUSION: Although only one side of the nasal airway was involved, one-third of the patients reported abnormal nasality. In patients with more disease severity who underwent wide opening surgery, the nasalance significantly increased 1 year after FESS. The increase in the objective nasalance score was corresponded to a significant improvement of subjective self-reported nasality assessment postoperatively.

PMID:34281727 | DOI:10.1016/j.jfma.2021.06.030

J Voice. 2021 Jul 16:S0892-1997(21)00190-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2021.05.019. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS: The objectives of this study were to (1) identify optimal clusters of 15 standard acoustic and aerodynamic voice metrics recommended by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) to improve characterization of patients with primary muscle tension dysphonia (pMTD) and (2) identify combinations of these 15 metrics that could differentiate pMTD from other types of voice disorders.

STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective multiparametric METHODS: Random forest modeling, independent t-tests, logistic regression, and affinity propagation clustering were implemented on a retrospective dataset of 15 acoustic and aerodynamic metrics.

RESULTS: Ten percent of patients seen at the New York University (NYU) Voice Center over two years met the study criteria for pMTD (92 out of 983 patients), with 65 patients with pMTD and 701 of non-pMTD patients with complete data across all 15 acoustic and aerodynamic voice metrics. PCA plots and affinity propagation clustering demonstrated substantial overlap between the two groups on these parameters. The highest ranked parameters by level of importance with random forest models-(1) mean airflow during voicing (L/sec), (2) mean SPL during voicing (dB), (3) mean peak air pressure (cmH2O), (4) highest F0 (Hz), and (5) CPP mean vowel (dB)-accounted for only 65% of variance. T-tests showed three of these parameters-(1) CPP mean vowel (dB), (2) highest F0 (Hz), and (3) mean peak air pressure (cmH2O)-were statistically significant; however, the log2-fold change for each parameter was minimal.

CONCLUSION: Computational models and multivariate statistical testing on 15 acoustic and aerodynamic voice metrics were unable to adequately characterize pMTD and determine differences between the two groups (pMTD and non-pMTD). Further validation of these metrics is needed with voice elicitation tasks that target physiological challenges to the vocal system from baseline vocal acoustic and aerodynamic ouput. Future work should also place greater focus on validating metrics of physiological correlates (eg, neuromuscular processes, laryngeal-respiratory kinematics) across the vocal subsystems over traditional vocal output measures (eg, acoustics, aerodynamics) for patients with pMTD.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II.

PMID:34281751 | DOI:10.1016/j.jvoice.2021.05.019

J Pediatr Surg. 2021 Jul 8:S0022-3468(21)00485-1. doi: 10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2021.06.013. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Background In congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) survivors, failure to thrive is a well-known complication, ascribed to several factors. The impact of lung volume on growth of CDH survivors is poorly explored. Our aim was to evaluate if, in CDH survivors, lung volume (LV) after extubation correlates with growth at 12 and 24 months of life. Methods LV (measured as functional residual capacity-FRC) was evaluated by multibreath washout traces with an ultrasonic flowmeter and helium gas dilution technique, shortly after extubation. All CDH survivors are enrolled in a dedicated follow-up program. For the purpose of this study, we analyzed the correlation between FRC obtained shortly after extubation and anthropometric measurements at 12 and 24 months of age. We also compared growth between infants with normal lungs and those with hypoplasic lungs according to FRC values. A p < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results We included in the study 22 CDH survivors who had FRC analyzed after extubation and auxological follow-up at 12 and 24 months of age. We found a significant correlation between FRC and weight Z-score at 12 months, weight Z-score at 24 months and height Z-score at 24 months. We also demonstrated that CDH infants with hypoplasic lungs had a significantly lower weight at 12 months and at 24 months and a significantly lower height at 24 months, when compared to infants with normal lungs. Conclusion We analyzed the predictive value of bedside measured lung volumes in a homogeneous cohort of CDH infants and demonstrated a significant correlation between FRC and growth at 12 and 24 months of age. An earlier identification of patients that will require an aggressive nutritional support (such as those with pulmonary hypoplasia) may help reducing the burden of failure to thrive.

PMID:34281708 | DOI:10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2021.06.013

Clin Oncol (R Coll Radiol). 2021 Jul 16:S0936-6555(21)00262-4. doi: 10.1016/j.clon.2021.07.003. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Modern multimodality cancer treatment has led to a rise in cancer survivors, and by 2030 the survival rate is estimated to increase by 31.4%. This is an impressive survival statistic on which clinicians and services continue to build. One of the less well-acknowledged consequences of survivorship among health professionals and patients alike is female sexual dysfunction, despite it occurring in more than 60% of women diagnosed with cancer. The systematic assessment and management of late effects from cancer lack integration within current models of oncology follow-up. Although highly prevalent, issues linked to sexual health are often not addressed among survivors. This overview aims to focus on the sexual impact of gynaecological cancer treatment. Clinicians should raise the topic of the sexual consequences of cancer treatment as a legitimate aspect of survivorship and service provision. Increased focus on the sexual consequences of treatment and cancer survivorship may in time lead to greater clinical recognition, service development and, most importantly, increase research focused on the effective management of what remains a neglected aspect of cancer care.

PMID:34281725 | DOI:10.1016/j.clon.2021.07.003