Renal Denervation for Hypertension: The Current Landscape and Future Directions.

Hypertension (HTN) is one of the largest contributors to cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality in the USA and is estimated to affect 47% of the US population; however, recent estimates suggest that over 40% continue to have uncontrolled HTN. In the past decade, multiple placebo-controlled randomized studies have shown the safety and efficacy of renal denervation as an adjunctive therapy, culminating in the recent approval of two devices by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These devices use either radiofrequency or ultrasound energies to ablate the perivascular sympathetic nerves in the renal arteries and have been shown to reduce blood pressure.

Impact of patient information format on the experience of cancer patients treated with radiotherapy.

Introduction: Radiotherapy (RT) stands as one of the main cancer treatments. The impact of RT and cancer treatment can have a physical and psychological impact on patients and their carers. To gain patient's trust, and ensure they feel valued, information should be provided before, during, and after RT.

Room Temperature Diels-Alder Reactions of 4-Vinylimidazoles.

In the course of studying Diels-Alder reactions of 4-vinylimidazoles with -phenylmaleimide, it was discovered that they engage in cycloaddition at room temperature to give high yields of the initial cycloadduct as a single stereoisomer. In certain cases, the product precipitated out of the reaction mixture and could be isolated by simple filtration, thereby avoiding issues with aromatization observed during chromatographic purification. Given these results, intramolecular variants using doubly activated dienophiles were also investigated at room temperature.

New evidence on the impacts of cross-market hospital mergers on commercial prices and measures of quality.

Objective: To examine the impact of "cross-market" hospital mergers on prices and quality and the extent to which serial acquisitions contribute to any measured effects.

Data Sources: 2009-2017 commercial claims from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) and quality measures from Hospital Compare.

Study Design: Event study models in which the treated group consisted of hospitals that acquired hospitals further than 50 miles, and the control group was hospitals that were not part of any merger activity (as a target or acquirer) during the study period.

Private Equity-Acquired Physician Practices And Market Penetration Increased Substantially, 2012-21.

Private equity (PE) firms have been acquiring physician practices at an increasing rate, raising concerns about such firms' penetration at the physician level into local markets and the impact on health care quality and prices. However, limited knowledge exists about the extent of PE firms' control in local markets. By linking data on PE acquisitions to physician data and using full-time-equivalent physicians as the base of assessment, we estimated the local market share of each PE firm within ten physician specialties at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level.