Publications by authors named "Ackermann D"

Objective: Surgical coaching has become more widespread and involves both technical and nontechnical skills. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is an important nontechnical skill and is associated with leadership skills, increased job satisfaction and superior nontechnical skills. This scoping review aimed to explore the use of EI as a component of surgical coaching.

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Objective: Eating is often a social activity that can be influenced by others, particularly in close relationships when dietary preferences reflect underlying value differences. We sought to examine the personality traits of meat-eating couples who differ in their preferences for meat.

Method: We recruited Swiss romantic couples in which one partner typically consumed more meat than the other (N = 272, couples = 136).

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Objective: Adrenomedullin (ADM) is a potent vasodilator. The association between plasma ADM levels and blood pressure (BP) remains unclear. We assessed the association between mid-regional-pro-ADM (MR-proADM) and BP in a multicenter population- and family-based cohort.

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Background: Limited data exist on the motivations and expectations of participants when enrolling in dermatology clinical trials, including melanoma early detection trials. Understanding participant motivators for research engagement has been identified as a prioritized area for trial methodology research.

Objective: The study aimed to determine motivators of participation and expectations from trial involvement among patients enrolled in the MEL-SELF randomized clinical trial of patient-led surveillance for new or recurrent melanoma.

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Background: In our previous studies, we investigated the right-left asymmetry (RLA) of cerebral tissue oxygenation (StO) at rest in humans and the influence of the individual chronotype (i.e. individual chronobiological disposition) on StO.

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Introduction: Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) affect up to 10% of all pregnancies annually and are associated with an increased risk of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. This guideline represents an update of the Society of Obstetric Medicine of Australia and New Zealand (SOMANZ) guidelines for the management of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy 2014 and has been approved by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) under section 14A of the National Health and Medical Research Council Act 1992. In approving the guideline recommendations, NHMRC considers that the guideline meets NHMRC's standard for clinical practice guidelines.

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Objective: To investigate the potential impacts of optimizing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) rapid antigen test (RAT) self-testing diagnostic accuracy information.

Design: Online randomized experiment using hypothetical scenarios: in scenarios 1 to 3 (RAT result positive), the posttest probability was considered to be very high (likely true positives), and in scenarios 4 and 5 (RAT result negative), the posttest probability was considered to be moderately high (likely false negatives).

Setting: December 12 to 22, 2022, during the mixed-variant Omicron wave in Australia.

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Article Synopsis
  • * The decay of ^{6}He into ^{4}He, a neutron, and a dark matter particle (χ) allows for clear detection when using an efficient neutron detector.
  • * A recent experiment at Grand Accélérateur National d'Ions Lourds set an upper limit on the dark decay branching ratio and provided improved constraints on dark neutron decays, making them significantly more precise than previous findings.
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Unlike electro-acoustic sound sources, musical instruments have a time-varying, dynamic directivity, due to the note-dependent radiation behavior of the instrument and due to the expressive movements that musicians perform with their instrument. While previous studies have generally examined the directivity of the static, unmoved instrument for specific notes played, we show the individual and combined contributions of these two factors to a temporal modulation of the radiation behavior, based on motion tracking of typical movement patterns for all instruments of a classical symphony orchestra and on the directivity measured for all partials over the entire pitch range of these instruments. The effect of this modulation, which is manifested by changes in timbre and room acoustic excitation, was determined by spectral variations in the free field and under reverberant conditions, as well as by a modulation of room acoustic parameters.

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Background: Adherence to self-management interventions is critical in both clinical settings and trials to ensure maximal effectiveness. This study reports how the Behaviour Change Wheel may be used to assess barriers to self-management behaviours and develop strategies to maximise adherence in a trial setting (the MEL-SELF trial of patient-led melanoma surveillance).

Methods: The Behaviour Change Wheel was applied by (i) using the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation-Behaviour (COMB) model informed by empirical and review data to identify adherence barriers, (ii) mapping identified barriers to corresponding intervention functions, and (iii) identifying appropriate behaviour change techniques and developing potential solutions using the APEASE (Affordability, Practicability, Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, Acceptability, Side-effects and safety, Equity) criteria.

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The excited states of unstable ^{20}O were investigated via γ-ray spectroscopy following the ^{19}O(d,p)^{20}O reaction at 8  AMeV. By exploiting the Doppler shift attenuation method, the lifetimes of the 2_{2}^{+} and 3_{1}^{+} states were firmly established. From the γ-ray branching and E2/M1 mixing ratios for transitions deexciting the 2_{2}^{+} and 3_{1}^{+} states, the B(E2) and B(M1) were determined.

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Extra-adrenal de novo aldosterone (Aldo) production has been described inconsistently. Systematic data based upon state-of-the-art technology including validated controls are sparse. We hypothesized that aldosterone synthase (CYP11B2) expression and de novo Aldo production are absent in nonadrenal human cell lines, either immortalized cell lines or commercially available primary cell lines, including peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of individuals without and with primary hyperaldosteronism (PA).

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Article Synopsis
  • High-throughput sequencing technologies have enabled researchers to study the genetic and epigenetic contributions to complex traits through large-scale Genome-Wide and Epigenome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS/EWAS).
  • The study, based on a cohort from Lausanne, Geneva, and Bern (N=1100), analyzed over 7.5 million SNPs and 420,000 CpGs across 825 phenotypes, with significant findings including 103 associations in GWAS and 109 in EWAS.
  • The results are accessible via a newly developed web platform called PhenoExplorer, aiming to enhance understanding of the relationships between molecular variations and phenotypic traits.
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Objectives: To review evaluations of the diagnostic accuracy of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) rapid antigen tests (RATs) approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for self-testing by ambulatory people in Australia; to compare these estimates with values reported by test manufacturers.

Study Design: Systematic review of publications in any language that reported cross-sectional, case-control, or cohort studies in which the participants were ambulatory people in the community or health care workers in hospitals in whom severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection was suspected, and the results of testing self-collected biological samples with a TGA-approved COVID-19 RAT were compared with those of reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing for SARS-CoV-2. Estimates of diagnostic accuracy (sensitivity, specificity) were checked and compared with manufacturer estimates published on the TGA website.

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Background: After treatment for a localized melanoma, patients attend routinely scheduled clinics to monitor for new primary or recurrent melanoma. Patient-led surveillance (skin self-examination with patient-performed teledermoscopy) is an alternative model of follow-up that could replace some routinely scheduled visits.

Objective: This study aims to assess the acceptability of a hypothetical reduction in routinely scheduled visits among participants of the Melanoma Self Surveillance (MEL-SELF) pilot randomized clinical trial of patient-led surveillance (intervention) versus usual care (control).

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Background: The growing number of melanoma patients who need long-term surveillance increasingly exceeds the capacity of the dermatology workforce, particularly outside of metropolitan areas. Digital technologies that enable patients to perform skin self-examination and send dermoscopic images of lesions of concern to a dermatologist (mobile teledermoscopy) are a potential solution. If these technologies and the remote delivery of melanoma surveillance are to be incorporated into routine clinical practice, they need to be accepted by clinicians providing melanoma care, such as dermatologists and general practitioners (GPs).

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Background: Evaluation of renal function and of factors associated with its decline are important public health issues. Besides markers of glomerular function [e.g.

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Importance: Adherence, both in research trials and in clinical practice, is crucial to the success of interventions. There is limited guidance on strategies to increase adherence and the measurement and reporting of adherence in trials of melanoma self-management practices.

Objective: This scoping review aimed to describe (1) strategies to improve adherence to self-management practices in randomized clinical trials of people at high risk of melanoma and (2) measurement and reporting of adherence data in these trials.

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Two-dimensional comparative fluorescence gel electrophoresis (CoFGE) uses an internal standard to increase the reproducibility of coordinate assignment for protein spots visualized on 2D polyacrylamide gels. This is particularly important for samples that need to be compared without the availability of replicates and thus cannot be studied using differential gel electrophoresis (DIGE). CoFGE corrects for gel-to-gel variability by co-running with the sample proteome a standardized marker grid of 80-100 nodes, which is formed by a set of purified proteins.

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Background: Cardiovascular events are the main cause of death in patients with chronic kidney disease. We hypothesize that the protective effects of renal cholesterol and vitamin D metabolism are lost under this condition. Nephropathy was induced by adenine in Apolipoprotein E knockout mice.

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Background: Current clinician-led melanoma surveillance models require frequent routinely scheduled clinic visits, with associated travel, cost, and time burden for patients. Patient-led surveillance is a new model of follow-up care that could reduce health care use such as clinic visits and medical procedures and their associated costs, increase access to care, and promote early diagnosis of a subsequent new melanoma after treatment of a primary melanoma. Understanding patient experiences may allow improvements in implementation.

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Aims: Glomerular damage indicated by proteinuria is a main symptom in diabetic nephropathy. Mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) antagonists (MRAs) are beneficial irrespective of aldosterone availability. Thus, we hypothesized an alternatively activated MR to promote glomerular damage in proteinuric diabetic nephropathy.

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Importance: Patient-led surveillance is a promising new model of follow-up care following excision of localized melanoma.

Objective: To determine whether patient-led surveillance in patients with prior localized primary cutaneous melanoma is as safe, feasible, and acceptable as clinician-led surveillance.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This was a pilot for a randomized clinical trial at 2 specialist-led clinics in metropolitan Sydney, Australia, and a primary care skin cancer clinic managed by general practitioners in metropolitan Newcastle, Australia.

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Background: Lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] is an LDL-like molecule that is likely causal for cardiovascular events and Lp(a) variability has been shown to be mostly of genetic origin. Exogenous hormones (hormone replacement therapy) seem to influence Lp(a) levels, but the impact of endogenous hormone levels on Lp(a) is still unknown. The aim of the study was to assess the effect of endogenous steroid hormone metabolites on Lp(a).

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Objective: To investigate the relations between caffeine-derived metabolites (methylxanthines) and plasma lipids by use of population-based data from 2 European countries.

Methods: Families were randomly selected from the general population of northern Belgium (FLEMENGHO), from August 12, 1985, until November 22, 1990, and 3 Swiss cities (SKIPOGH), from November 25, 2009, through April 4, 2013. We measured plasma concentrations (FLEMENGHO, SKIPOGH) and 24-hour urinary excretions (SKIPOGH) of 4 methylxanthines-caffeine, paraxanthine, theobromine, and theophylline-using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

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