Publications by authors named "Betz C"

Individuals living in rural areas report poorer health outcomes, including obesity, compared to individuals living in urban areas. Amongst others, this is due to restricted access to opportunities for healthy eating and physical activity. Interventions are urgently needed to address this gap.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Automatic segmentation and detection of vestibular schwannoma (VS) in MRI by deep learning is an upcoming topic. However, deep learning faces generalization challenges due to tumor variability even though measurements and segmentation of VS are essential for growth monitoring and treatment planning. Therefore, we introduce a novel model combining two Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models for the detection of VS by deep learning aiming to improve performance of automatic segmentation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Limited evidence exists that serves to guide the field of practice and research pertaining to the long-term issues and needs of adults with spina bifida. Understanding the lived experience of adults with spina bifida has lagged behind considerably resulting in limited evidence-based guidance for individuals with spina bifida and their families and the health care professionals who provide services to this population. Given the paucity of knowledge of the lived experience as it pertains to adulthood, this scoping review was undertaken.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Limited knowledge exists as to the supports and services young people with IDD and co-occurring mental health conditions need to transition to adult-focused health care and adulthood.

Methods: The survey findings presented were part of a larger investigation that explored these service and supports needs obtained from 144 respondents. Data reported for this investigation were obtained from 144 respondents who answered the question, "What do you think would be most helpful to assist young people with IDD and mental health conditions with the transition from child to adult health care (not including mental health care)?"Qualitative analysis based upon the social-ecological model was undertaken.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: With over 184,000 new cases and more than 99,000 deaths per year, malignancies of the larynx are a global health problem. Currently, a dedicated screening method enabling a direct onsite diagnosis is missing. This can lead to delayed diagnosis and worse outcomes of the patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Genomic resources are important for evaluating genetic diversity and supporting conservation efforts. The garden dormouse () is a small rodent that has experienced one of the most severe modern population declines in Europe. We present a high-quality haplotype-resolved reference genome for the garden dormouse, and combine comprehensive short and long-read transcriptomics data sets with homology-based methods to generate a highly complete gene annotation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Malignancies in the nasopharynx and related areas differ from head and neck squamous cell carcinomas, leading to unique treatment approaches and biology.* -
  • Recent studies presented at the ASCO 2024 Meeting reveal promising advancements in treatment for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), particularly with the use of PD-1 inhibitors and other targeted therapies.* -
  • Key findings include improvement in event-free survival with adjuvant therapies and high remission rates with combined treatments in NPC, as well as effective responses in anaplastic thyroid carcinoma with a new combination therapy.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) negative for Human Papillomavirus (HPV) has remained a difficult to treat entity, whereas tumors positive for HPV are characterized by radiosensitivity and favorable patient outcome. On the cellular level, radiosensitivity is largely governed by the tumor cells` ability to repair radiation-induced DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), but no biomarker is established that could guide clinical decision making. Therefore, we tested the impact of the expression levels of ATM, the central kinase of the DNA damage response as well as DNA-PKcs and Ku80, two major factors in the main DSB repair pathway non-homologous end joining (NHEJ).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Currently, there is an intensive discussion about enhancing and expanding outpatient rhinosurgical procedures. Many questions about how to stratify into out- and inpatient procedures are still not sufficiently clarified. Particularly, the use of nasal packing materials is not adequately discussed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Objective: There's an ongoing debate about which rhinosurgical procedures should be done on an outpatient basis versus inpatient, highlighting a lack of clarity, especially about nasal packing materials.
  • - Material and Methods: A checklist was created to help categorize sinunasal procedures into inpatient or outpatient based on current research and identified risk factors.
  • - Results and Conclusions: The study identifies specific sinunasal procedures best suited for inpatient treatment and provides a thorough checklist to guide decisions on procedure type and patient discharge readiness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The time required for genome sequencing and assembly depends on the interaction between laboratory work, sequencing capacity, and the bioinformatics workflow, often constrained by external sequencing services. Bringing together academic biodiversity institutes and a medical diagnostics company with extensive sequencing capabilities, we aimed at generating a high-quality mammalian genome in minimal time. We present the first chromosome-level genome assembly of the Whippet, using PacBio long-read high-fidelity sequencing and reference-guided scaffolding.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: There is limited caregiver-reported evidence determining health care transition (HCT) outcomes for their adolescents/young adults with special health care needs (AYA-SHCN). A subcommittee of the International and Interdisciplinary Healthcare Transition Research Consortium aimed to identify multidimensional outcomes of a successful HCT among AYA-SHCN based on parents/caregivers' perspectives.

Methods: After literature review and expert interviews, a three-stage Delphi process identified HCT outcomes based on parents/caregivers' perspectives.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A plunging ranula, a type of sublingual salivary gland cyst, can initially be mistaken for a vallecular cyst, but ultrasound and MRI are important for accurate diagnosis.* -
  • The case presented involves an 18-year-old male with a rare form of plunging ranula that extends above the mylohyoid muscle into the oropharynx without a typical cervical swelling.* -
  • The report emphasizes the importance of using MRI for distinguishing between diagnoses and highlights the need for establishing guidelines for further investigations in such atypical cases.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Despite its high prevalence, the determinants of smelling impairment in COVID-19 remain not fully understood. In this work, we aimed to examine the association between olfactory bulb volume and the clinical trajectory of COVID-19-related smelling impairment in a large-scale magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) analysis. Data of non-vaccinated COVID-19 convalescents recruited within the framework of the prospective Hamburg City Health Study COVID Program between March and December 2020 were analyzed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Paranasal anomalies, frequently identified in routine radiological screenings, exhibit diverse morphological characteristics. Due to the diversity of anomalies, supervised learning methods require large labelled dataset exhibiting diverse anomaly morphology. Self-supervised learning (SSL) can be used to learn representations from unlabelled data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Since its release, Dupilumab has shown great results in treating severe uncontrolled CRSwNP. However, there is a lack of real-world data beyond 12 months of follow-up, and it is not clear to what extent biomarkers are appropriate for monitoring and predicting the Dupilumab therapy success. Hence, this study aims to analyze biomarkers for monitoring therapy, predicting therapy success and assess the effect of Dupilumab in real-world settings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Modern, highly evolved nucleoside-processing enzymes are known to exhibit perfect regioselectivity over the glycosylation of purine nucleobases at N9. We herein report an exception to this paradigm. Wild-type nucleoside phosphorylases also furnish N7-xanthosine, a "non-native" ribosylation regioisomer of xanthosine.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Nasal septum perforation (NSP) is a common condition affecting ~1.2% of the general population and is still considered challenging to treat. Therapeutic strategies range from conservative local treatments and septal button closures to over 40 different surgical approaches.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Youth and young adults (YYA) with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have high rates of co-occurring mental health (MH) conditions. The time during transition from pediatric to adult health and mental health care can be a very challenging, with risk of loss of services leading to poor outcomes. This study aimed to explore barriers to transition from pediatric to adult health and mental health care and services for individuals with IDD and co-occurring MH conditions, by eliciting the view of stakeholders, including disability advocates.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The number of tracheotomized patients with dysphagia and their need for treatment are continuously increasing in clinical and community settings. The revised version of the directive on home care and community-based intensive care of the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) requires that tracheotomized patients are regularly evaluated with the aim of identifying and promoting the therapeutic potential after hospital discharge. Dysphagia treatment plays a crucial role as without improvement of severe dysphagia there is practically no possibility for decannulation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Computer aided diagnostics (CAD) systems can automate the differentiation of maxillary sinus (MS) with and without opacification, simplifying the typically laborious process and aiding in clinical insight discovery within large cohorts.

Methods: This study uses Hamburg City Health Study (HCHS) a large, prospective, long-term, population-based cohort study of participants between 45 and 74 years of age. We develop a CAD system using an ensemble of 3D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to analyze cranial MRIs, distinguishing MS with opacifications (polyps, cysts, mucosal thickening) from MS without opacifications.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Extended endoscopic endonasal surgery (EEES) is an essential part of treatment of various pathologies of the anterior skull base. In addition to significant improvements in the quality of life of affected patients and a lower complication profile compared to open skull base surgery, the therapeutic results are comparable if the indications are correct.

Materials And Methods: Data of all endoscopic endonasal skull base procedures performed at the University Skull Base Center Hamburg under the direction of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology between June 2018 and November 2022 were retrospectively collected.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF