External rigid distraction is an established method for achieving subcranial Le Fort III advancement in severe syndromic craniosynostosis. Craniofacial surgeons commonly use halo-type devices for these corrections, as they allow for multiple vectors of pull and facilitate larger midfacial advancements. Although most complications related to their use involve pin displacement or infection, rare complications such as skull fractures have been reported.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSotalol, a class III antiarrhythmic agent, is used to maintain sinus rhythm in patients with atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter (AFIB/AFL). Despite its efficacy, sotalol's use is limited by its potential to cause life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias due to QT interval prolongation. Traditionally, sotalol administration required hospitalization to monitor these risks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Decisions about stroke prevention strategies in atrial fibrillation (AF) typically balance thromboembolism reduction against increased bleeding from oral anticoagulation therapy (OAC). When determining eligibility for OAC, guidelines recommend calculation of thromboembolic event rates using a validated score such as CHA2DS2-VASc. In contrast, routine calculation of bleeding scores is not recommended, in part because many patient factors associated with an increased risk of bleeding are associated with an even larger increased risk of ischemic stroke.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Safe and effective pharmacologic therapy for atrial fibrillation (AF) in heart failure (HF) is an unmet need. In AF clinical trials, the standard primary endpoint of time to first symptomatic AF event (TTFSE) has several disadvantages, which could theoretically be overcome by measurement of AF-specific symptoms burden during an entire follow-up period.
Objectives: The authors sought to develop and validate a method of measuring symptom burden of AF in a HF population.
Background: Artificial intelligence-machine learning (AI-ML) has demonstrated the ability to extract clinically useful information from electrocardiograms (ECGs) not available using traditional interpretation methods. There exists an extensive body of AI-ML research in fields outside of cardiology including several open-source AI-ML architectures that can be translated to new problems in an "off-the-shelf" manner.
Objective: We sought to address the limited investigation of which if any of these off-the-shelf architectures could be useful in ECG analysis as well as how and when these AI-ML approaches fail.