Publications by authors named "Anna Linden"

Background: As Alzheimer disease (AD) and AD-related dementias (ADRD) progress, individuals increasingly require assistance from unpaid, informal caregivers to support them in activities of daily living. These caregivers may experience high levels of financial, mental, and physical strain associated with providing care. CareVirtue is a web-based tool created to connect and support multiple individuals across a care network to coordinate care activities and share important information, thereby reducing care burden.

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Background: Digital health interventions are a promising method for delivering timely support to underresourced family caregivers. The uptake of digital health interventions among caregivers may be improved by engaging caregivers in participatory design (PD). In recent years, there has been a shift toward conducting PD remotely, which may enable participation by previously hard-to-reach groups.

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Article Synopsis
  • Ankle sprains are common in sports, and using external ankle support during rehab is believed to improve recovery outcomes.
  • A study involving 13 soccer players compared a novel adaptive ankle brace to traditional ankle taping during their rehabilitation process, tracking the time taken to return to sport.
  • Results showed a shorter median recovery time with the brace (52.5 days) compared to taping (79.5 days), and players rated the brace as comfortable, suggesting it may be a more effective solution for ankle support.
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Objectives: To assess the value created in a learning community - comprised of different professionals and nursing students - at a nursing home.

Methods: A case study approach was used. Data were collected between 2019 and 2021 through self-reports, observations and stories (interviews, diaries).

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Background: Human factors research involves the study of work system interactions, physician workload, cognitive effort, and performance. This pilot study incorporated a human factor approach and other surgery-based metrics to assess cognitive workload among plastic surgeons during elective plastic surgery breast procedures.

Methods: In this prospective study of plastic surgery breast procedures over a 3-month period, surgeon and patient demographics and procedural details were collected.

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Background And Objectives: Care partners of people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) are faced with substantial legal and financial planning related to their care partner role. However, many care partners lack the legal and financial support needed to manage this role. The purpose of this study was to engage ADRD care partners in a remote participatory design process to create a technology-based financial and legal planning tool that meets care partner needs.

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Objective: To explore the use of a shared communication and coordination platform-the CareVirtue journal feature-for care networks of people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias to inform the design of care network support technologies.

Materials And Methods: In the primary study, care networks comprised the primary caregiver and other caregivers they invited to participate (eg, family members, in-home aides) used CareVirtue, for 60 days followed by a semistructured interview to explore primary caregivers' perceptions of usefulness. This secondary analysis focused on use of the shared journal feature of CareVirtue, which allowed care networks to communicate through posts that were shared with the network and to which network members could respond.

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Background: People living with Alzheimer disease and related dementias (ADRD) require prolonged and complex care that is primarily managed by informal caregivers who face significant unmet needs regarding support for communicating and coordinating across their informal care network. To address this unmet need, we developed CareVirtue, which provides (1) the ability to invite care network members; (2) a care guide detailing the care plan; (3) a journal where care network members can document, communicate, and coordinate; (4) a shared calendar; and (5) vetted geolocated caregiver resources.

Objective: This study aims to evaluate CareVirtue's feasibility based on: (1) Who used CareVirtue? (2) How did caregivers use CareVirtue? (3) How did caregivers perceive the acceptability of CareVirtue? (4) What factors were associated with CareVirtue use?

Methods: We conducted a feasibility study with 51 care networks over a period of 8 weeks and used a mixed methods approach that included both quantitative CareVirtue usage data and semistructured interviews.

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Objective: Course content was designed and the learning outcomes assessed for an online ergonomics course for surgical residents. This course could fulfill an optional Surgical Council on Resident Education (SCORE) curriculum on Surgical Ergonomics.

Design: The online course included five 5-minute modules within the residents' learning system, each ending with an ungraded knowledge question, and a final 5-question multiple-choice retention quiz that allowed infinite attempts.

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Objective: The objective of this study was to estimate the ergonomic postural risk (EPR) for musculoskeletal posture of vascular surgeons performing open and endovascular procedure types and with various adjunctive equipment using wearable inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors. The hypothesis was that EPR will increase with increased physical and mental demand as well as with procedural complexity.

Methods: A prospective, observational study was conducted at a large, quaternary academic hospital located at two sites.

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Background: Breast surgery has evolved with more focus on improving cosmetic outcomes, which requires increased operative time and technical complexity. Implications of these technical advances in surgery for the surgeon are unclear, but they may increase intraoperative demands, both mentally and physically. We prospectively evaluated mental and physical demand across breast surgery procedures, and compared surgeon ergonomic risk between nipple-sparing (NSM) and skin-sparing mastectomy (SSM) using subjective and objective measures.

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The solubility and bioavailability of cadmium (Cd) in infant foods, three cereal- and milk-based diets and two ready-to-use baby dishes, were studied after in vitro digestion and by using human intestinal Caco-2 cells. The solubility of Cd after in vitro digestion varied between diets; liver casserole had the highest solubility and was lower after infant as compared to adult digestion conditions. Generally, more Cd was soluble in infant intestinal than gastric juice in contrast to the results from the adult digestion.

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The relationships between cadmium (Cd) levels in soil, feed crops, feed concentrate, pig feed mixture, water, pig blood, and kidney from 49 farms were investigated and the possibility to use pig kidney as a bioindicator of available Cd in the agricultural environment was evaluated. There were correlations between Cd levels in soil and wheat, between wheat and barley, and between feed and kidney. The accumulation ratio between Cd levels in feed and kidney was on average 3.

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