Regular Application of Sunscreen Can Prevent Skin Cancer.

This review summarizes the evidence on the protection against skin cancer afforded by sunscreen. Solid evidence can come only from randomized controlled trials, despite a multitude of case-control and cohort studies that have addressed the issue, because observational evidence is intractably confounded since those at highest risk of skin cancer are naturally the highest users of sunscreen. Findings of the single human trial conducted in subtropical Australia during 1992-1996 with follow-up to 2014 showed that the application of a broad-spectrum, sun protection factor 16 sunscreen to exposed skin of the head and neck and upper limbs at least 3-4 days per week in adulthood can reduce the risk of developing cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma but does not appear to reduce the risk of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) overall, although it may reduce the occurrence of multiple BCCs over time.

Improved mental health among LABILE study participants: A qualitative exploration.

Results of the LABILE trial showed no difference between people with BPD who were prescribed lamotrigine and those on placebo. However, most study participants experienced sustained improvement in their mental health during the trial. We conducted a thematic analysis of qualitative data from interviews with 47 LABILE study participants to identify factors that may have contributed to this improvement.

Urethral Pressure Variation: A neglected contributing factor in patients with overactive bladder syndrome?

Objective: To study urethral pressure variations during the whole filling phase among different groups of patients.

Material And Methods: We investigated 79 consecutive patients from January 2011 to June 2012. All patients were recruited within our routine practice in our continence clinic and were evaluated with urodynamic exam according to the standards of the International Continence Society (ICS) with an additional continuous measurement of the urethral pressure profile (cUPP) that was done in a supine position.

The evolving costs of intracoronary stents.

Background: As stenting practice has evolved to include greater numbers of stents and adjunctive balloon catheters per case, concern has focused on the increasing costs of equipment for the delivery of stents.

Methods And Results: To evaluate temporal changes in costs of intracoronary stenting, we examined total costs, catheterization laboratory equipment costs, equipment utilization, and nonlaboratory hospital costs for stent cases for two time periods: Period I (n = 46; 3 months in 1995 involving routine warfarin anticoagulation) and Period II (n = 129; 4 months during which warfarin was being abandoned). Overall costs declined from Period I ($11,293+/-$7672) to Period II ($9819+/-$3636) (p = 0.

Cost advantages of an ad hoc angioplasty strategy.

Objectives: We sought to determine the cost advantage of a strategy of same-sitting diagnostic catheterization and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) (ad hoc) in comparison with staged PTCA.

Background: It is widely assumed that an ad hoc strategy lowers costs by reducing the length of hospital stay (LOS). However, this assumption has not been examined in a contemporary data set.

Cardiologists' perception of risk of coronary revascularization procedures.

We sought to determine if differences exist between interventional and noninterventional cardiologists in the perception of risk of revascularization procedures and to compare the physicians' estimates with a computer-based predictor formula from a large regional database. We found that interventional cardiologists perceived greater risk of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty-related morbidity and mortality than noninterventionalists and that these differences were accentuated in female patients, the elderly, and the most seriously ill patients.

Precise quantification of dialysis using continuous sampling of spent dialysate and total dialysate volume measurement.

The "gold standard" method to evaluate the mass balances achieved during dialysis for a given solute remains total dialysate collection (TDC). However, since handling over 100 liter volumes is unfeasible in our current dialysis units, alternative methods have been proposed, including urea kinetic modeling, partial dialysate collection (PDC) and more recently, monitoring of dialysate urea by on-line devices. Concerned by the complexity and costs generated by these devices, we aimed to adapt the simple "gold standard" TDC method to clinical practice by diminishing the total volumes to be handled.

Evaluation of the significance of a transvalvular catheter on aortic valve gradient in aortic stenosis: a direct hemodynamic and Doppler echocardiographic study.

We studied 18 patients with aortic stenosis undergoing routine cardiac catheterization to determine the effect of a transvalvular catheter on transaortic pressure gradients. By measuring the Doppler gradients before and after the withdrawal of the pigtail catheter, we demonstrated significant increases in the peak instantaneous and mean gradients when the catheter straddled the valve, an effect that was more pronounced with increasing severity of stenosis.