Publications by authors named "Annie Ma"

Background: Because physician practices contribute to national healthcare expenditures, initiatives aimed at educating physicians about high-value cost-conscious care (HVCCC) are important. Prior studies suggest that the training environment influences physician attitudes and behaviors towards HVCCC.

Objective: To explore the relationship between medical student experiences and HVCCC attitudes.

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Purpose: There is a demand for improved care delivery surrounding genomic testing and clinical trial enrollment among patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC). We sought to improve the current process via real-time informal consultation and prescreening assessment for patients with MBC treated by community and academic medical oncologists by implementing a virtual molecular and precision medicine (vMAP) clinic.

Methods: The vMAP program used a virtual referral system directed to a multidisciplinary team with precision medicine expertise.

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Introduction: Computed tomography (CT) is performed in over 90% of patients diagnosed with ureteral stones, but only 10% of patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) with acute flank pain are hospitalized for a clinically important stone or non-stone diagnosis. Hydronephrosis can be accurately detected using point-of-care ultrasound and is a key predictor of ureteral stone and risk of subsequent complications. The absence of hydronephrosis is insufficient to exclude a stone.

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Article Synopsis
  • Systematic tissue collection during diagnostic breast biopsies has shown to be a safe and effective method to gather fresh specimens for research purposes.
  • Out of 395 patients approached, a high consent rate of 68.4% was achieved, leading to 446 research specimens collected without any immediate complications.
  • Analysis revealed significant findings, including strong correlations in HER2 assessment and cellular diversity, indicating the potential for innovative studies in cancer research.
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Background: Moyamoya disease is a condition with potentially devastating and permanent neurological sequelae. Adequate volume status and blood pressure, tight control of carbon dioxide to achieve normocarbia, and providing postoperative analgesia to prevent hyperventilation are typical goals that are used during anesthetic care in these patients. The purpose of this study was to assess postanesthesia neurological complications in moyamoya patients undergoing general anesthesia for imaging studies and surgical procedures excluding neurosurgical revascularization.

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Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by an autosomal dominant polyglutamine expansion mutation of Huntingtin (HTT). HD patients suffer from progressive motor, cognitive, and psychiatric impairments, along with significant degeneration of the striatal projection neurons (SPNs) of the striatum. HD is widely accepted to be caused by a toxic gain-of-function of mutant HTT.

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The performance of pseudocapacitive electrodes at fast charging rates are typically limited by the slow kinetics of Faradaic reactions and sluggish ion diffusion in the bulk structure. This is particularly problematic for thick electrodes and electrodes highly loaded with active materials. Here, a surface-functionalized 3D-printed graphene aerogel (SF-3D GA) is presented that achieves not only a benchmark areal capacitance of 2195 mF cm at a high current density of 100 mA cm but also an ultrahigh intrinsic capacitance of 309.

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Background: The anxiety and their related disorders (AD) are the most prevalent of all mental health conditions, disproportionately affecting women. The value of perinatal AD screening is well established but there is very limited evidence to support the applicability of existing anxiety screening instruments. To our knowledge, no previous studies have evaluated an AD screening instrument in a perinatal population using full gold standard methodology.

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Background: Unwanted intrusive thoughts of intentionally harming one's infant (intrusive harm thoughts) are common distressing experiences among postpartum mothers and fathers.

Aim: To understand infant crying as a stimulus for intrusive harm thoughts and associated emotional responses in prepartum and postpartum mothers and fathers in response to infant cry.

Method: Following completion of self-report measures of negative mood and anger, prepartum (n = 48) and postpartum (n = 44) samples of mother and father pairs completed 10 minutes of listening to audio-recorded infant crying.

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We present the case of a laryngospasm event in a 21-month-old child in which the changes in pulse oximetry and end-tidal carbon dioxide were recorded by both our Anesthesia Information Management System and middleware medical device integration platform. When this case was analyzed retrospectively, we noted that the 2 systems recorded the event very differently with respect to pulse oximetry. This case report illustrates the impact of data sampling rates on post hoc analysis of perioperative events and highlights the importance of understanding data collection processes when using electronically recorded data.

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Early dysfunction of cortical motor neurons may underlie the initiation of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). As such, the cortex represents a critical area of ALS research and a promising therapeutic target. In the current study, human cortical-derived neural progenitor cells engineered to secrete glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) were transplanted into the SOD1 ALS rat cortex, where they migrated, matured into astrocytes, and released GDNF.

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Introduction: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repetitive head injuries. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy symptoms include changes in mood, behavior, cognition, and motor function; however, CTE is currently diagnosed only postmortem. Using a rat model of recurrent traumatic brain injury (TBI), we demonstrate rodent deficits that predict the severity of CTE-like brain pathology.

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Background: Concussion injury is the most common form of traumatic brain injury (TBI). How recurrent concussions alter long-term outcomes is poorly understood, especially as related to the development of neurodegenerative disease. We evaluated the functional and pathological consequences of repeated TBI over time in wild type (WT) rats as well as rats harboring the human SOD1 mutation ("SOD1"), a model of familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

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Background: The optimal heart rate (HR) for children after trauma is based on values derived at rest for a given age. As the stages of shock are based in part on HR, a better understanding of how HR varies after trauma is necessary. Admission HRs of pediatric trauma patients were analyzed to determine which ranges were associated with lowest mortality.

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