Publications by authors named "A C Spadaro"
Background: The increasing use of social media to share lived and living experiences of substance use presents a unique opportunity to obtain information on side effects, use patterns, and opinions on novel psychoactive substances. However, due to the large volume of data, obtaining useful insights through natural language processing technologies such as large language models is challenging.
Objective: This paper aims to develop a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architecture for medical question answering pertaining to clinicians' queries on emerging issues associated with health-related topics, using user-generated medical information on social media.
Background: The selection of the best donor for each specific patient is crucial for the success of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). However, there is debate on the choice of the best donor when multiple suitable donors exist.
Methods: By using own data from two transplant centers, we have developed a calculator able to provide the patients' 2-year overall survival (OS) associated with each of the potential donor options during the selection process, in order to support the transplant physician during the choice.
Article Synopsis
- Buprenorphine is a safe and effective treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD), but opioid withdrawal during the start of treatment can lead to patients dropping out of care.
- Recent shifts in the drug supply, particularly the rise of fentanyl, have heightened concerns about withdrawal symptoms being triggered by buprenorphine, yet some studies report low incidence rates of such incidents.
- This study aimed to evaluate the occurrence of buprenorphine-precipitated withdrawal (PW) in patients and examine various factors that may influence its likelihood, using data from patients at three hospitals in Philadelphia treated between 2020 and 2021.
Article Synopsis
- Buprenorphine is typically given sublingually for opioid withdrawal, but when that's not possible, intravenous (IV) or intramuscular (IM) methods can be effective alternatives despite limited practitioner experience in this area.
- A case series reviewed patient charts from an urban hospital who received parenteral buprenorphine between January 2020 and December 2021, focusing on demographics, medical and substance use histories, and withdrawal outcomes.
- Out of eight patients studied, the majority responded positively to the treatment, showing improvement in withdrawal symptoms, especially in cases with issues like delirium; no adverse effects were reported, indicating promise for this method in future applications.
Article Synopsis
- Thallium is a toxic metal, and this case details a young man who intentionally ingested elemental thallium purchased online, leading to dangerously high serum and urine thallium levels.
- The patient was treated with Prussian blue, a medication that binds to thallium, after having the ingested metal fragment removed via colonoscopy.
- Despite initial severe thallium levels that typically indicate fatal exposure, the patient showed no signs of toxicity after 23 days in the hospital, highlighting a need for more research on the effects of elemental thallium versus thallium salts.