Publications by authors named "Alexei A Birkun"

Article Synopsis
  • Social media, particularly TikTok, has the potential to improve public awareness on how to handle generalized seizures, but the quality of information shared is concerning.* -
  • A study analyzed TikTok videos with over 100,000 views on first aid for seizures, revealing that they often omit crucial guidelines and contain misleading advice, such as improper movement of the person during a seizure.* -
  • The findings highlight the urgent need for research and regulations to address the spread of misleading information on TikTok to prevent potentially harmful actions in seizure situations.*
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Although first aid research is a wide-ranging and diverse field within medical science, so far no attempts have been made to provide a holistic view of international scientific outputs in the first aid domain. To determine strategic directions for conducting future studies, it is important to understand the status of the research, including its frontiers and blind spots. This study explored the global landscape of first aid research using bibliometric visualization analysis of relevant literature published within the last 20 years.

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Foreign body airway obstruction (FBAO) frequently occurs unwitnessed. In the absence of external assistance and the ability to rapidly reach help, immediate self-management of FBAO could be the only way to avoid impending death from asphyxia. In this letter, relevant evidence of real-life self-management of severe FBAO from public comments posted on social media were gathered and reported.

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Introduction: Innovative large language model (LLM)-powered chatbots, which are extremely popular nowadays, represent potential sources of information on resuscitation for the general public. For instance, the chatbot-generated advice could be used for purposes of community resuscitation education or for just-in-time informational support of untrained lay rescuers in a real-life emergency.

Study Objective: This study focused on assessing performance of two prominent LLM-based chatbots, particularly in terms of quality of the chatbot-generated advice on how to give help to a non-breathing victim.

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The ability of the cutting-edge large language model-powered chatbots to generate human-like answers to user questions hypothetically could be utilized for providing real-time advice on first aid for witnesses of cardiovascular emergencies. This study aimed to evaluate quality of the chatbot responses to inquiries on help in heart attack. The study simulated interrogation of the new Bing chatbot (Microsoft Corporation, USA) with the "heart attack what to do" prompt coming from 3 countries, the Gambia, India and the USA.

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Introduction: The ever-growing penetration of internet and mobile technologies into society suggests that people will increasingly use web searches to seek health-related information, including advice on first aid in medical emergencies. When a bystander is incompetent in first aid and has no immediate support from Emergency Medical Services (EMS), as it happens in low-resource settings or in disasters, instructions found online could be the sole driver for administering first aid before arrival of professional help.

Study Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate quality of advice on first aid generated by a web search engine's question-answering system (QAS) in response to search queries concerning provision of help in common health emergencies.

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Study Objective: Web-based big data analytics provides a great opportunity to measure public interest in cardiac arrest (CA) and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). This study aimed to examine associations of online interest in CPR and CA with epidemiological characteristics of out-of-hospital CA (OHCA) and national socioeconomic indicators in a set of European countries.

Methods: Country-level online search popularity data for CPR and CA topics measured in relative search volume (RSV) with Google Trends (GT), published OHCA epidemiological indicators, and World Bank's socioeconomic statistics of 28 European countries for the year 2017 were analyzed for correlation using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient ( ).

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Background: The application of an exogenous pulmonary surfactant as a carrier for intratracheally administered antimicrobials represents a promising therapeutic modality that is still on its way to clinical practice. Owing to its ability to decrease surface tension, exogenous surfactant may enhance delivery of antibiotics into foci of pulmonary infection, thus increasing efficiency and safety of topical antimicrobial therapy in bacterial lung diseases.

Objectives: To assess potential interactions between exogenous surfactant and amikacin in vitro, and to study the effects of their joint intratracheal instillation in rats with acute pneumonia caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

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