Publications by authors named "Ari Brooks"

Purpose: Breast density is a widely established independent breast cancer risk factor. With the increasing utilization of digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) in breast cancer screening, there is an opportunity to estimate volumetric breast density (VBD) routinely. However, current available methods extrapolate VBD from two-dimensional (2D) images acquired using DBT and/or depend on the existence of raw DBT data, which is rarely archived by clinical centers because of storage constraints.

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Objective: To collaboratively develop a hybrid virtual curriculum for a medical school surgery clerkship within an emerging medical university in Vietnam.

Design: A hybrid virtual surgery clerkship curriculum was collaboratively developed by Vietnamese and American surgeons as part of an international partnership between their respective universities. A set of 25 virtual lectures with associated materials were created and deployed in tandem with live, in-person review and skills sessions.

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Objective: Our aim was to assess how ChatGPT compares to Google search in assisting medical students during their surgery clerkships.

Design: We conducted a crossover study where participants were asked to complete 2 standardized assessments on different general surgery topics before and after they used either Google search or ChatGPT.

Setting: The study was conducted at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (PSOM) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Objective: Stereotypes of surgeons are pervasive and play a role in medical students' decisions about pursuing a surgical career. This study aimed to determine: (1) how medical students' perceptions of surgery and surgeons changed following exposure to surgery during clerkship rotations; and (2) if gender and racial/ethnic identification played a role in this process.

Design, Setting, And Participants: In this mixed-method study, clerkship students at one U.

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Background: Patients with advanced cancer staging have a greater risk of developing venous thromboembolism than noncancer patients. The impact of breast cancer stage and treatment on outcomes after autologous free-flap breast reconstruction (ABR) is not well-established. The objective of this retrospective study is to determine the impact of breast cancer characteristics, such as cancer stage, hormone receptor status, and neoadjuvant treatments, on vascular complications of ABR.

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Background: Results of an earlier retrospective study from our institution suggested that patients with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) who had preoperative MRI may have had an improved local recurrence rate (LRR) after breast conserving surgery (BCS). We aimed to clarify the impact of preoperative MRI on surgical outcomes in an expanded TNBC cohort treated by BCS in a contemporary era.

Methods: Our study cohort comprised 648 patients with TNBC who underwent BCS between 2009 and 2018.

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Background: Significant disparities in surgical outcomes exist. It is imperative to prepare future doctors to eliminate disparities. Our team of senior medical students developed a surgical clerkship module examining equity in prostate cancer.

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Background: The American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer's (CoC) new operative standards for breast cancer, melanoma, and colon cancer surgeries will require that surgeons provide synoptic documentation of essential oncologic elements within operative reports. Prior to designing and implementing an electronic tool to support synoptic reporting, we evaluated current documentation practices at our institution to understand baseline concordance with these standards.

Methods: Applicable procedures performed between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2018 were included.

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Background: We hypothesize that in addition to specimen margin widths other clinical variables may help predict the presence of residual disease in the lumpectomy bed.

Methods: Patients with Stage I-III invasive breast cancer (BC) who underwent partial mastectomy (PM) and re-excision from July 2010-June 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. Bivariate analyses were conducted using two-sample t-tests for continuous variables and Fisher's Exact tests for categorical variables.

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For the over 28 million Americans without health insurance, there is a great need to develop programs that help meet the health needs of the uninsured population. We applied the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) quality improvement framework to the development, implementation, and evaluation of a breast cancer screening navigation program for un- and under-insured women. Six critical steps emerged: (1) obtain program funding; (2) navigator training; (3) establish a referral base network of community partners that serve the un- and under-insured women; (4) implement a process to address the barriers to accessing mammography; (5) develop a language- and culturally-tailored messaging and media campaign; and (6) develop measures and process evaluation to optimize and expand the program's reach.

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Background: This study utilized the Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety and the Nontechnical Skills for Surgeons grading systems to evaluate the nontechnical skills of general surgery and obstetrician/gynecologist residents to see if these grading systems were concordant. These simulations were also intended to teach about crisis resources available at our institution.

Methods: Nineteen teams were created consisting of either one general surgery resident or 2 Obstetrician/Gynecologist residents plus 2 Anesthesia residents and 2 to 4 nurses.

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Purpose: Poor health literacy and awareness are thought to be some of the major contributors to existing racial/ethnic disparities in access to breast reconstruction after mastectomy. This study aimed to determine whether physician led, community-based educational symposium improves understanding of breast cancer care and breast reconstruction in underserved populations.

Methods: Annual educational symposiums were held between 2017 and 2019 in underserved communities in the greater Philadelphia area.

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Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of a professionally trained, resilience coach for surgical interns.

Design: Mixed-methods study with pre- and postcoaching quantitative surveys measuring burnout and resilience factors and semistructured interviews.

Setting: General, Vascular, Cardiac, Plastic, and Urologic Surgery residencies at a tertiary academic center.

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When breast cancer is detected and treated early, the chances of survival are very high. However, women in many settings face complex barriers to early detection, including social, economic, geographic, and other interrelated factors, which can limit their access to timely, affordable, and effective breast health care services. Previously, the Breast Health Global Initiative (BHGI) developed resource-stratified guidelines for the early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer.

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Purpose: Globally, breast cancer represents the most common cause of cancer death among women. Early cancer diagnosis is difficult in low- and middle-income countries, most of which are unable to support population-based mammographic screening. Triage on the basis of clinical breast examination (CBE) alone can be difficult to implement.

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Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have challenged the need for routine radiation therapy (RT) in women ≥ age 70 with favorable early stage breast cancer (BC) due to modest improvement in local control and no survival benefit. We studied practice patterns in RT among elderly women in the United States. We analyzed data from the National Cancer Database (NCDB) of women ≥age 70 diagnosed with T1 or T2 and N0 invasive BC treated with breast conservation surgery (BCS) between 2004 and 2014.

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Background: Nipple sparing mastectomy (NSM) is considered safe for select patients. Our objective was to examine quality of life (QOL) and satisfaction for NSM compared with skin sparing mastectomy (SSM). We aimed to evaluate these using the BREAST-Q.

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Objective: The American College of Surgeons/Association of Program Directors in Surgery is a comprehensive, simulation-based curriculum for General Surgery residents which exists in 3 phases. While phases 1 and 2 deal with core skills and advanced procedures respectively, phase 3 targets team-based skills. To date, the 3rd phase of this curriculum has not seen wide scale implementation.

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Objective: The ability to use electronic medical records (EMR) is an essential skill for surgical residents. However, frustration and anxiety surrounding EMR tasks may detract from clinical performance. We created a series of brief, 1-3 minutes "how to" videos demonstrating 7 key perioperative EMR tasks: booking OR cases, placing preprocedure orders, ordering negative-pressure wound dressing supplies, updating day-of-surgery history and physical notes, writing brief operative notes, discharging patients from the postanesthesia care unit, and checking vital signs.

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Fibrocystic Breast Disease (FBD) or Fibrocystic change (FC) affects about 60% of women at some time during their life. Although usually benign, it is often associated with pain and tenderness (mastalgia). The synthetic steroid danazol has been shown to be effective in reducing the pain associated with FBD, but the cellular and molecular mechanisms for its action have not been elucidated.

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Objective: Nontechnical skills are an essential component of surgical education and a major competency assessed by the ACGME milestones project. However, the optimal way to integrate nontechnical skills training into existing curricula and then objectively evaluate the outcome is still unknown. The aim of this study was to determine the effect laparoscopic team-based task training would have on the nontechnical skills needed for laparoscopic surgery.

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Objective: To systematically review the literature surrounding operating room-based in situ training in surgery.

Methods: A systematic review was conducted of MEDLINE. The review was conducted based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology, and employed the Population, Intervention, Comparator, Outcome (PICO) structure to define inclusion/exclusion criteria.

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A lab-scale, tunable, single-filament, point-to-point nonthermal dieletric-barrier discharge (DBD) plasma device was built to study the mechanisms of inactivation of aerosolized bacterial pathogens. The system inactivates airborne antibiotic-resistant pathogens efficiently. Nebulization mediated pre-optimized (4 log and 7 log) bacterial loads were challenged to plasma-charged aerosols, and lethal and sublethal doses determined using colony assay, and cell viability assay; and the loss of membrane potential and cellular respiration were determined using cell membrane potential assay and XTT assay.

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